New Mexico ridden in 14 days...

Brazos Ridge, New Mexico and Horca, Colorado

It was warmer in the morning. For some reason it took me a lot of mucking about to get my gear organized. We rode about a km before we began to climb up a steep and rocky road.

At one point, I found a huge black feather lying on the road. I think it might be a crow's feather. It's about 40 cm long. Ruth says feathers are good luck, so I'm carrying it with me -- I'm not sure if I'll be allowed to bring it back with me to New Zealand, but I'll try.

The dry and hot air made my nose bleed -- for about the fourth time since we started riding.

Pete found the going really tough today. We had to wait a lot for him to catch up.

 At one point, two motorcyclists passed us. I was slightly ahead, and Gay called out "rider down". I thought he meant that Pete had crashed, but when I got back I saw it was a third motorcyclist. Pete and Gay helped him to right his bike. He had skidded on some loose gravel, and had broken his front brake!

As we rode on, we saw thousands of caterpillars again on the road. It was impossible to avoid them entirely, as the track was rough and rocky, but I tried.

The climbing was tough, lots of it was just a steady unsealed road, but then other parts were rough and rocky, or with deep ruts. I had to walk a few of the steeper uphills.

 At long last we reached the top of the first major climb, the Brazos Ridge at 11,000 feet. There were stunning views, and a moderate wind, though it was quite warm.

 By this time it was 11:30 AM, and we had covered 34 km since starting to ride just after 7.

Amazingly, we had a cellphone signal, and I was able to send Ruth a text message. We rode into the trees, where we had lunch sitting beside a pile of half-melted snow.

 The descent down the other side was insane: riding down a steep slope with loose rocks everywhere. It felt like riding down a scree slope. I was very careful not to crash, and put my feet down several times. The other two walked down because it was so dangerous.

 The rocky descent finally became an ordinarily unsealed road again, and we descended into a huge valley. In the valley we suddenly saw an old man walking with a stick and his dog! He seemed to be a shepherd -- there was a flock of sheep, some cows, and another dog wandering about.  The old man spoke only Spanish, but he seemed to be encouraging us on -- he gave me a pat on my back as I rode past!

We rode to the far end of the valley, and began to climb again. The climb seemed to be relentless -- Pete was struggling, while Gay and I just rode along. I was tired but it wasn't too bad -- my mountain bike really suited this terrain.

We had covered 44 km by 3 PM, and we knew it was about 75 km to Horca. I was worried that Pete wouldn't be up to it, but we kept going, stopping a few times to rest and eat.

The hills just never seemed to end, and even the descents were really hard work. This is definitely the most technical and rough riding we have done so far on the entire Divide route.

At one point, we heard the whistle of a train.  There is a steam train based in Durango, not far to the west of here, it goes to Silverton.  At long last we descended into a huge field, and a little bit further on we reached the Colorado state line. Progress!

We then descended some more and reached another valley with cabins. 

 Almost immediately, the road seemed to be less rough. We stopped for some food, then climbed up a series of switchbacks, over the railway line, and onto the highway at last.

 Just before we reached the highway I saw a deer standing near the track. It watched me for a while before darting into the trees.

As we reached the tar-seal, we met another cyclist. He was planning to tour part of the Divide route, but had decided to skip the New Mexico section. We could understand why: the last five days have been brutal.  It felt strange to ride on tar-seal again. It was so smooth and so easy to cover the distance!

We descended a bit and then climbed to another pass at 10,300+ feet, before riding down a spectacular 8 km descent into the township of Horca.

We didn't dare hope that the store would still be open, but it was -- for another 15 minutes!

 Better yet, there was a restaurant right next door where we ate a huge dinner of fried chicken and "all you can eat fixin's"...the fixin's were beans, corn, and mashed potato with a white gravy. Yum! They also gave us "biscuits" (scones), and I had some peach cobbler for dessert.

We then rode to the local campground, where we set up our tents. I saw a hummingbird hover next to our hung-up food bags, and did a Tai Chi sword set using a stick that was lying on the ground.

We had covered 75 km, and done around 1,400 metres (4,500 feet) of climbing.

Colorado almost feels like a different country. The roads seem better, and the people are much more friendly towards cyclists. It feels good to be here at last.

Somewhere in the mountains, but not quite Colorado yet...

I felt cold during the night, and woke to a chilly 9 degrees. It was hard packing, and I had numb fingers and toes for the first hour of riding. I regretted having given my polypro gloves to Greg to take back to San Francisco.

We saw a squirrel, and elk-prints in the dusty road.

The climbing was relentless; by the time we had ridden 10 km, we had already climbed 1,000 feet. We rode past a farm house in the middle of nowhere that looked deserted, and then the remains of an old log cabin.

 There were quite a few squirrels around, but no other animals.

The temperature was much kinder today: it was only 20 degrees at 9 AM, and 28 degrees at 10 AM. The hottest it got was the mid-30s.

We passed through a huge alpine meadow, still climbing. We climbed almost constantly for the first 25 km, where we reached a height of 10,000 feet.

 Then descended back to about 8,000 feet where we reached a sealed road with a campground and picnic area -- and fresh water.

There were thousands of caterpillars on the road...I tried dodging them again, but it was almost impossible.

We met two people riding the divide route on motorbikes. They were originally going to cycle it but decided to use motorbikes instead. They had camping gear, etc, but could of course travel a lot faster than we could. They had travelled from Abiquiu in just half a day.

We stopped at the picnic area to have lunch. So far, we had only ridden 28 km...it was tough going with all that climbing!

We looked at the map, and decided we would have to load up on water, so we left with heavy bikes again.

We then enjoyed a fast 6 km descent on the sealed highway before turning off onto a dirt road and more endless climbing.

 After about 40 km the road began to undulate as we crossed another huge grassy plain. The scenery was spectacular, the roads were quite rough, and we were getting tired.

Pete gave up and ditched his extra water, trusting that we would find some along the way. I wasn't so sure, so I kept my water and struggled with the weight.

As we rode through the plain, we saw hundreds of locusts on the road. They would take off as we approached, and fly with us on their yellow-and-black wings. One hit me on the ear.

At long last we reached an intersection and turned into a road that the map described as "higher grade". Gay joked that that just meant that the road had more gravel -- and he was exactly correct! It was tough riding on all the loose gravel.

The road turned and reached a wide canyon with a river at the bottom. As soon as we started to drop into the canyon, we began to battle a strong head wind, which made the riding even more difficult. After a few km we decided to stop for food and a rest -- and to get out of the wind.

The river was fenced off, with some kind of reserve around it. There were no bushes beside the road to shelter behind, so we climbed the fence and walked across to a good-sized bush. I sat down, and quickly realised I was sitting on some kind of stinging nettle! My hands and ankles were itchy for about half an hour afterwards.

 We ate more food, and then Gay and I had a nap while Pete tried to make his way down to the river to get some water. He didn't make it...the ground became too boggy, and then he managed to cut his thumb while cleaning the mud from the cleats on the bottom of his shoes.

We rode on for a few more km before reaching a bridge across the river, which was rather grandly called the Rio San Antonio.

 A hundred metres beyond the bridge was a patch of scrub beside the road, where we decided to camp for the night.

We washed ourselves and our clothes, and I sewed up my lightweight arm warmers -- they were too wide for my scrawny arms, so I made the upper end narrower so they won't fall down all the time.

 We had a dinner of pasta and "spam animals" as Gay described it, also known as tinned spam.

 After dinner, we filtered some water from the river, had a cup of tea and went to bed. We joked that it was a late night -- 8 PM -- but we are all really tired from the riding.

Started today at the bottom squiggle, and camped tonight near Rio San Antonio

 

We had been riding for 5 hours, covered 60 km and climbed 1,200 metres (4,000 feet). Tonight we are camping  in the Placita Canyon at about 8,800 feet. We also passed the half-way mark today -- half way from Columbus to Steamboat Springs. What a journey!