Ups and Downs: Riding The Passes of Colorado

It seems like I’ve been right in saying Colorado needs to be its own trip. Every time I turn a corner or crest a hill there is another insanely beautiful vista. I see so many views in a day you’d think I would be desensitized after nearly a month, but I have to stop and soak it in over and over.

It seems no matter where I go I stumble on an old mining cabin, old mining equipment, old mining towns…they did a lot of mining around here. Every crevice in every valley seems to have been prodded and poked, or, if a vein was found, turned into an operating mine. Some of them are tremendously impressive. Even building a mill and housing of that quality with today’s technology would be a big ask. Of course, if precious metal prices are high enough, it’s worth it.

The downside I’ve found is that riding 4×4 trails means not taking in the views. With a fully loaded motorcycle. the front tire can be bounced off any random stone and you can find yourself pointing off the edge of a cliff. More likely is to be bounced off-line and into a small ditch or a bigger rock, or a loose pile of stones that puts the rear tire in a slide. The stall-and-fall– when it happens at high altitude– is exhausting. The bike usually falls to the downhill side, making it hard to pick up.

Huffing and puffing after something like that usually requires pulling my helmet off and sitting down for several minutes. Then, you have to restart on a hill in the same loose stone that made you fall before; it’s a recipe for falling again. To counter this, stopping to take a lot of breaks works, so long as the trail is wide enough to allow other vehicles to pass. This gives time to take in the views also, so my entire memory of a mountain pass isn’t every rock I dodged.

My body is at least acclimated to the altitude now, and I’ve been melding with the bike more. Despite decades of experience, I’m an asphalt guy. I started motorcycling at 20-years-old, purchasing my first motorcycle while in the Marines. I’ve done a fair amount of off-road riding, but almost entirely in the California desert, which is flatter and faster than the narrow, rock-strewn trails of Colorado.

The more I ride, the more I’m able to keep my speed up, riding over the top of stones and making fast adjustments  with body position, letting the handlebars bounce around, but still keeping the motorcycle aimed in the right direction. It also helps having a base camp. Most my gear can stay at camp while I explore a region, and I don’t have to stop early to find a campsite and set up camp. Good news all around, as the monotony of packing and unpacking daily is the biggest grind: not the weather or the dirt and mud, or the bruises and campside food.

Speaking of bruises, I got turned around by my first trail. It was sloped toward the cliff edge and kept having stony climbs. Each climb was worse than the last. It was too exhausting, and when I met someone hiking past my camp that night, he said the trail got even worse. I reckon I made the right choice, but it was still a disappointment. The trail was only marked as a 6/10.

The silver lining was taking the highway around to meet the other side of the trail, in the town of Crested Butte. The easy flowing road allowed me to see more views, as it is second nature to pick a smooth line on asphalt roads. The air was fresh and cool, the clouds were pillows of cumulus, and the sun added color to the summer flowers.

I had a moment of reflection too, where I finally forgave myself for some of my past transgressions. So much of our live is colored by our past. We see ourselves as being the things we’ve done. “You are what you do” is a common phrase. The problem is this phrase is easy to misinterpret. You are what you are doing, not what you’ve done. We have the moment we are living in to create the future moments we live into.

If we choose to color our present view with what we’ve done, it can create a filter that makes the world appear not as it actually is. This is something I’ve intellectually understood for well over a decade, and have used to an extent, but intellectual understanding is not experiential understanding. The act of truly “getting” that I am not my past is freeing in ways I won’t bother describing. The end result is being able to create your future from an unfiltered present.

Almost immediately I had another realization. I was riding CR12, a well graded but mostly unpaved county road. The hard packed dirt means you can generally treat it like asphalt so long as it’s dry. Because of this, I was flowing perfectly with the road, reading each approaching curve by seeing the terrain and predicting which was it would turn next. I was in the zone. The bike was in its zone. The air was still cold in the mid-morning, but the warm sun shone down on everything.

County Road 12.

As I came over a rise and the sun lit up the roadway through the trees, I caught sight of the open meadow beyond. Suddenly, I became aware of a broad smile on my face. I felt in my body the physical sensation of experiencing joy. It was so odd, as I was experiencing joy, but really I was experiencing myself experiencing joy. I became aware of the foreignness of the feeling, and realized it had been untold years since I felt this feeling.

I’d had many positive times of course: uncontrollable laughter with friends, the pride of accomplishment after a motorcycle race, the feeling of loving someone and being loved…plenty of positive memories. But joy…when was the last time I felt this raw, almost child-like joy? I couldn’t remember. At the same moment I became aware of my eyes watering. I became so sad for myself, having gone so long without this feeling…so long that I had forgotten it even existed.

It wasn’t self-pity. It was empathy. I’m such a harsh critic of myself, I generally just mentally tuck my pants into my boots and wade into a world of shit. That’s all just a self-created concept of the world though, and having a moment of empathy for myself was an unbelievable breakthrough, happening in the exact moment I was experiencing tremendous joy. It’s hard to describe how important it is to love yourself, unless you’re explaining it to a person who already knows the feeling of coming up short in the self-love category.

In any event, I made it to Crested Butte and found a city-run, free campground in Mount Crested Butte, the town just above Crested Butte itself. There was no shade but it was on a gorgeous hillside covered in summer flowers. I used this as my base camp for 4-5 days, and was able to really fall in love with the region. I saw more of the adjacent towns but also got to see some more ghost towns. Interestingly, the town of Tincup and St. Elmo are both occupied, so I don’t know if you can really call them ghost towns. They are historic, but also have shops or a restaurant or a general store and tackle shop.

I rode so many passes, saw old rail lines and the remains of water towers that fed the steam locomotives; they had to be placed every 2-5 miles in this area because of the steep climb involved. The effort boggles my mind that so much could be build entirely by hand, and kept in operation even in the harsh winters of Colorado.

Water towers were placed 3-5mi apart on the heavy climb through this stretch so steam locomotives could be resupplied.

I also made a loop up to Aspen, which seemed as bad as the stereotype. It was just Range Rovers and trophy wives out jogging. To the north was Woody Creek though, where Hunter S. Thompson set up his property, Owl Farm, and lived out his final days. That meant Woody Creek Tavern– the only one in town– became a default hangout for him. Rain was coming down in buckets so I stopped in for a whiskey and a beer, but the rain didn’t stop so I ordered a rye and made friends with the manager. She showed me around the building and talked about the local scene, different seasons, the service industry in general, and her own travel plans.

It was a great distraction and I was a little bummed out to head back out in the damp. I also didn’t get back to camp until after dark, so it was a cold ride in, then a night of heavy rain beating on the tent.  When I finally packed up I decided to head back to Leadville by way of Cottonwood Pass. I had been through once, but it deserved more exploration. With heavy rains forecast again, I found a hostel in town and booked a private room with its own shower, knowing I’d need it.

Boy was I right.

I hit rain here and there, but it was the last five miles that did the real damage. A massive storm cell was hanging right over Leadville. I tried to let it pass by riding an old stagecoach road adjacent to the highway. I came across a random cabin laying in ruins and wondered if it might have been a stagecoach stop. They tended to have one every 15mi or so at these altitudes, since a horse team couldn’t be expected to go more than 20miles before exhaustion and a long rest.

In any event I got to soak up the scenery an do some imagining of bygone times, but even after poking around the tiny town of Granite and looking at cool abandoned cars and historic buildings (and an old gas station/restaurant for sale, hmm) the storm was hanging over Leadville.

After skirting it for miles in light rain, the drops became fat, then started to give the tell-tale tink-tink sound of hail. As I rounded a curve there it was: a wall of weather coming slowly at me.  I put on the rainsuit just as hail started to form from the slushy rain. Within minutes it was a deluge. The hail was so painful against my hands and knees that I couldn’t make it past 20mph. Even then I eventually gave up and stopped under a tree. The hail was small but coming down so hard it was stripping leaves.

I was essentially exposed as the hail got so bad cars began to pull over too. The cars that did pass by sent streams of hailstones from their tires it looked like snow. I was only four miles from the hostel…it was time to just suffer and get the hell out of this weather. I slipped and slid through the hail until I could get to a wheel track, then wobbled along at 20mph getting beaten to hell by the pouring hailstones.

The town had rivers of muddy water crossing from right-to-left but I made it just the same. I was actually soaked through my rainsuit when I got there, which is amazing since it doesn’t have any holes or splits. The weather was so heavy it permeated a set of impermeables. A hot shower was like being reborn. Not only was I filthy from five nights of camping (bathing in a cold stream or using baby wipes can only do so much) but my frozen, stinging hands warmed back up. The blood flow took the pain away and I slept in a real bed.

It was good enough to book another night in a smaller room with shared bath. This allowed me to do more exploring and plan the next few days, as well as charge my devices and get some laundry done. With the charging port on my phone broken and the battery dead,I won’t have any pictures, which is a bit of a shame since I’ll be hitting a few historic gravesites and a few more abandoned mines, mills, and a few of the endless system of reservoirs in Colorado.

I’ll at least leave you with some photos so far.