A nice cruisey day on the TAT. Temperatures were quite low most of the day so it was pleasant riding. At one point the scrub land turns to dunes for a short ways which made for some great drone shots. The most enjoyable part of today was riding through the Sids Mountain Wilderness Study Area. Big rock cliffs on both sides as you ride through the canyon on the way to Castle Dale. Most of this mornings ride was done at relatively...
What a wonderful evening we had. The wind died down and the stars came out. The moon was so bright, we had to use our neck buffs as eye blinds as we hadn't bothered to put the fly sheet on the tent fully. A steep descent from the campsite, followed by a couple more ups and downs before the trail slowly wound down towards the Green River. Still pretty slow going for us, but there seemed to be more hard packed...
Rocks, rocks and more rocks. We started with the rocks in Arches National Park and have ended the day with the rocks in Canyonlands National Park and they have been fantastic. We almost got off to an early start, but sometimes its one of those days when things take longer. You pack everything up, only to turn around and find you forgot something. Then the awkwardly shaped gas can does not want to be secured properly. Still, off to Arches by...
We are not sure if we are mad or stupid. It's probably a bit of both. We decided to take the groms for a lap around slick rock this morning. This is very much not grom territory. It was a blast though. Sim had a ball, me...
Brrrr. When we left Silverton this morning it was below zero. We set out to give the famed Ophir Pass our best shot fully thinking we might have to turn back after having heard all sorts of horror stories. However as it turns out, we had the perfect machines for the job. It's amazing what can be achieved when your bike is small enough that you can ride it while still walking. The rockfall that fell earlier in the year? has...
Words. So many words. Epic, stunning, scary, exhilarating, challenging, fun, tough, rewarding. A heap of expletives in there too. We did it. We made it up and over Cinnamon, California, Hurricane, Corkscrew and whatever other pass was between Lake City and Silverton and yes there was some pushing involved. Cinnamon didn't feel terribly difficult to get up. Of course for some reason, we did not examine our map very carefully before hand and had it in our heads that it was...
Wow, another wonderful day of riding with beautiful views. Colorado is delivering on expectations. At lot of the scenery reminds us of parts of New Zealand but on a much bigger scale. Lots of elevation gain, through forests, which then top out with lovely views. Quite chilly throughout the day, rain jacket and heated grips on again. At one point it dropped to about 10 deg C (50F) most of the time it hovered around 17 deg C (62F). Interestingly enough,...
What a gorgeous day. Easy roads, great scenery and it smells nice. Although the clouds threatened to rain on us, we managed to stay ahead of any down pours. It got pretty darn chilly at one point, our gps app told us we were over 3000m (9842 feet) so that is probably why. Groms did OK at elevation as long as we didn't try to go fast. Heated grips and rain jacket kept us warm throughout the day. The roads here...
Sigh...
We think our little rest day has made us soft, cos the TAT kicked our butts today. A very early start saw us on the trail by 6:45am and 3 hrs later after only covering 100km, we had had enough. It was a mix of soft sand, occasional muddy puddles, wheel tracks that were either soft and sandy or had dried with hard edges. Regardless, once you got stuck in the wheel track it was a tough time getting out of...