Super low energy today. Nevertheless, I dragged myself up and over Mt. Taylor, a common “alt” on the CDT and the tallest thing around by a good measure. Though a bit of a slog up, the views from the top made it all worthwhile.
Water is becoming more of an issue. My insouciance about find and carrying water to this point in the trip is going to need to give way to diligence (and carrying more than I would prefer—in general I’ve rarely carried more than a liter with me). Compared to hikers, I retain the advantage of being able to cover a lot of ground quickly on my bike, but the water source information on the FarOut guide is less reliable than it has otherwise been to date (presumably in part because the NOBO hiker comments are all 3+ months old at this point, and I seem to be well ahead of the SOBO hikers by now).
Would New Mexico be New Mexico without seeing at least one unidentifiable aerial object?
Spent yesterday holed up in Cuba, watching torrential rain and feeling quite pleased with my decision to wait out the weather.
Left Cuba bright and early this morning and discovered quickly after turning off the pavement that the desert landscape is very much still processing the rain from the last few days. Unfortunately, after a couple of miles, when the CDT became singletrack, I encountered a sign indicating the trail is closed to bikes (despite Trailforks showing the trail as bike legal).
Of the perils and hardships I had girded myself for during these travels, I must confess that quicksand was not one of them. While attempting to reroute to a nearby road, my front wheel collapsed through the surface of some hyper saturated sand, and pitched me right over the handlebars into fast sinking quicksand, adding insult (and muddy sand in unexpected places) to the already odd scenario of pulling my bike out of sinking sand. With my both my person and my bike heavily encrusted in wet sand, I pointed my bike back toward Cuba to regroup.
$16 in quarters at the carwash and one cup of coffee later, I’d outlined a new route of real roads (no more jeep tracks!) and was ready to go again. Just about this time, Sagar and Sarah (and their dogs Tux and Yucca) arrived from Santa Fe!
Sagar rode with me for some 30 miles, before we rejoined Sarah who had taken the dogs for a bit of a hike. Tailgate beers and tasty snacks were enjoyed!
Eventually I reluctantly said farewell and started back down the road.
One last bit of excitement for the day: just at sunset as I was cresting the mesa this evening, I saw a bear, standing on hind legs and seeming to stretch itself on the stout post of a gate. It ran off, but not before I got a good glimpse at both it and its cub!
Spent most of the day on the GDMBR, climbing from cholla cactus desert through pygmy piñon pines into proper ponderosa forests.
I gave a steady push in hopes of making it to Cuba, NM, both before the forecasted rain, feeling notably strong on the bike.
Finished the day with a short and quite fun section of CDT into Cuba.
It’s remarkable to me how quickly I’ve gone from worrying about snow storms to keeping an eye out for cactus spikes.
The rain caught me about 45 minutes from Cuba, but fortunately in a section of mostly decomposing granite (see: not death mud).
In Cuba I found the thing that I’ve come to look forward to most in civilization: not beer, not hamburgers, not a hot shower, but a car wash where I can take and clean my bike. Lightened of several pounds of cemented clay, I checked into my motel for the evening and have been watching the rain (flood watch!) ever since.
Listening to: “No Ordinary Times: Franklin & Eleanor Roosevelt: the Home Front in World War II” by Doris Kearns Goodwin
You know those dreams (nightmares?) where it feels like you’re trying to run under water, and the harder you strain the slower you go? This sensation is even more agonizing in waking life than in dreams.
Last night’s heavy rain continued intermittently and into this morning. There’s lots of clay in the soil here. I knew before I even made it out of my tent this morning that the CDT singletrack would be out of the question today, though I figured the hardened surfaces of the two track roads would be passable.
After ten minutes of attempting the muddy, sticky roads, I came up with the brilliant idea of just going cross country. That went great for about ten minutes until the nice grassy meadows ended in scrublands and I spent the next hour bushwhacking through thick bushes on cattle trails (often carrying my bike while ski/skating my way down or up nasty mud) to make it back to a two-track “road.”
Paradoxically, the road was somewhat ridable until the rain stopped and the sun came out, and until the wide swath with opportunity to get out of the mud narrowed into a road channel with impenetrable brush on both sides.
As soon as the sun came out, the surface of the dirt dried just enough such that passing a tire over it would dredge up the layer of mud beneath it, quickly bringing my wheels to a grinding halt.
I spent the next hour in a deepening sensation of that recurring dream… the harder I struggled, the more mired I became. I carried my bike, rolled the wheels backwards, knocked off thick layers of clay with dirty fingers of my feet (observing the bloating of my ruined shoes with clay), dragging my bike laterally for stretches, in desperate effort to escape the mud. Nothing worked.
Eventually, with dark thoughts and profuse profanities crowding my mind, I stopped and found a place to pass the time while waiting for the road to dry. After maybe 1.5 hours of sitting around (good occasion to get out my sewing kit and repair my torn rain pants), I ventured back on the road and found it mostly ridable (aside from a few agonizing sections) until I reached an actual road and suddenly life returned to normal. Following the dendritic structure of ever-bigger roads, I eventually made it to the paved highly, Ghost Ranch, and Abiquiu.
In retrospect, I’d have been so much better off to just wait things out from my campsite.
I have every virtue necessary to complete this route, save for patience. This is the second time that I’ve let a compulsive need to “make progress” get the better of me, rather than just waiting it out for the route to be ridable again. As a more experienced cyclist I suppose it would be intuitive that, when the rain comes, you have to wait. I’m still learning…
This was, by far, the worst experience I’ve shared with a bike.
Since that shadeless, cloudless, 100°F day in the Great Basin, I’ve only had two days without rain. No snow, and no wildfire smoke, but definitely an unusual amount of rain, with more in the forecast. I’ve been so grateful that I brought a real tent, not just a tarp on this trip.
Today was spent cruising along on pleasant if unremarkable singletrack. The trail clearly gets used more by cows than humans around here, but it’s mostly modern and ridable (if in need of a little chainsaw love).
Ran into a group of four retirees who are doing a supported four day bikepack from Cumbres Pass to Abiquiu. I was glad to meet them—aside from a few bikepackers who I saw on the Colorado Trail, they’re the first who I’ve met actually bikepacking on the CDT.
Listening to: The Story of a New Name by Elena Ferrante
