Valles Caldera National Preserve

Since leaving the Mexican border on the 10th of June, we've ridden a total of 475 miles. That's 760 kilometers in 9 days of riding, or an average of 84 km per day. Not bad for the heat, crazy terrain and other challenges we've had to deal with.

We have 667 miles, or 1,067 kilometers to go to Steamboat Springs. It almost seems doable, except for the huge amount of climbing we have to do tomorrow morning. 11,000 feet here we come...

 

 Camping on the edge of an ancient volcano.  Valles Caldera National Preserve features a 22km wide wide volcanic caldera in the Jemez Mountains of northern New Mexico. The highest point in the caldera is Redondo Peak, an 11,253-foot (3,430 m) resurgent lava dome located entirely within the caldera. 

We woke at 5:30, packed and had breakfast at McDonalds before heading out.

It was cold at the start: just 9 degrees. We had fully loaded bikes, with two day's worth of food and water, which made it hard going.

The road started climbing almost immediately, and was a steep climb the entire 16 km up a sealed road to the point where we turned into an unsealed fire road.

Even then, we seemed to climb much more than we dropped. We ended up climbing about 4,800 feet, and camped at 9,200 feet.

The terrain changed as soon as we left Cuba and started climbing: we entered the Santa Fe National Forest, and there were lots of trees (including aspens), lots of shrubs and grassy patches.

There were quite a few people car-camping along the way, but as we travelled further the road got more remote and we didn't see anyone.  What we did see were cows, squirrels and chipmunks, as well as quite a few birds. 

We heard crows and woodpeckers At one point I saw something that looked like a frog. Gay thinks it might have been a salamander that had lost its tail -- there was no water about for it to be a frog.

As we rode along, there were thousands of caterpillars crawling across the road. I tried to dodge them, but there were so many it was almost impossible.

 We felt the elevation a bit, but it didn't bother me apart from raising my heart rate a bit, and I felt short of breath a couple of times. With the elevation and the heavy load, I had to pace myself so I didn't blow up. My legs were tired from all the climbing, though, and I'm glad to have stopped.  We have another 1,000 feet of climbing tomorrow, before we drop down to Albique. It should be a solid day.

The highest temperature today was only 38 degrees -- it's getting cooler as we head further north.

My bike had the advantage in this terrain: I had to regularly stop and wait for the others to catch up, and I was very conscious of not wearing them out by leaving too quickly or going too far.

We're all quite tired tonight. At one point, we even stopped and slept for a while beside the road before carrying on.

At the camp site, we were harassed by cows as we set up our tents...they were heading down from the meadow we were camped at to what Gay thinks is a water hole, and our tents were too close to their path.

They complained until they found another way around to the path.

There were some squirrels running around, and I finally got a good photo of one.

We had had good weather today, hot but not so hot that we had to stop riding during the hottest part of the day, and only the occasional gentle breeze. The wind picked up just on dusk.

We really are at the mercy of the weather, the winds and the terrain out here. A day could be easy or terrible depending on the wind. if the going is easier, we just ride further, so every day ends when we reach a good stopping point like a town or camping spot, or we're just too tired to carry on.

We had dinner of instant noodles, a pre-packaged pasta dinner, and tuna, with dried apricots for dessert.

We've now covered over 800 kilometers since we started at the Mexican border. Barring a disaster, we should get to Colorado in another 3-4 days, and reach Steamboat Springs by the first week of July.