Our juniper pinyon campsite perched out on the rim of Lost Canyon turned out to be great. We had a nice big flat rock “patio” for cooking and a view of the red rock cliffs. Like most other nights not another person within god knows how many miles. At one point a jet fly over 30,000 feet up and we decided those were the closest humans to us. It was true solitude.
Today’s ride was not only my favorite of the trip thus far, I think Jen and Bob feel the same way, it was amazing in so many ways. Obviously the scenery and surrounding landscape were a huge part of this, but the road it’s self was incredible, a perfect grade for nearly 50 miles in beautiful fast condition. Although nearly the entire day was going to be gain in elevation, it was almost entirely giving at a reasonable rate. The only real downside to the day was that the 10 liters of water we each got in Hite would only be enough to get us to a water source about 46 miles into our day. This was certainly cutting close and had we not gotten out of the lower elevations before it got too warm we would have run out. As it was we were looking for other sources because the one we knew about was no guarantee.
Just before noon and 17 miles into the day we saw a group of RVers parked in a great camping spot off the road always. Jen and I decided to ride up there and see if they naught have a little water to spare. They were the nicest people! Not only did they give us several liters of water, they packed us a bag of “Kind” bars, tuna packets, peanuts and Olives! We had a nice long talk with them and were wishing we could have talked longer, always fun to have interactions like that out on the trail. There something about being on a bike that I think makes people curious and open to helping. Its not common to see people out there doing these monster trips in the backcountry, I think people are truly impressed and interested.
Bob had ridden past the RVs and we found him just up the road pump filtering water from a really crappy looking stock pond. Jen tried to make me pump water from it too. Even with the way we had it would not have gotten us through another night of camping and a day riding to Monticello. I was not excited to pump from this source, I didn’t want to clog our filters and I was pretty sure there would be water at the work station. I ended up filling a 2 liter Jerry can without filtering it and dropping a couple of chlorine tablets in it this way I’d have a back up 2 liters if the work station didn’t have water.
We ended up eating lunch at that pond and helped Paul make his final decision about just what he was going to do about his failing rear wheel. All afternoon yesterday he was battling freewheel issues and chain fall off, extremely frustrating to ride but he totally toughed it out. We convinced him that it would be best if he was to bail off the route and hitch hike into Monticello rather than ride the two days with us. We all decided that there was not much we would be able to do if it was to fail completely and it could take a couple days for us to get to town and find someone that could go out and get him. So after lunch we parted ways and Paul headed off the route.
This situation made me super proud of the people I was traveling with. Paul’s rear wheel issue was certainly the elephant in the room, and all of us were concerned for him and his bike. Bob eventually asked the hard question that had to be asked, forcing a converstation that had to happen before something bad happened. Bob flat out asked Paul what he was going to expect from us if it all went bad in the middle of nowhere? Paul took no time in giving his answer, and it was a good one. All he would need would be for us to keep riding and send someone back to get him when we could. That was all that could happen. From this conversation we were able to put together a better scenario even though it meant splitting up. Paul decided it was best to leave the route and hitch to Monticello.
The good news is he caught a ride right away into Monticello from a BLM ranger and was able to deduce that fixing what turned out to be a broken axle was not going to happen in Monticello. As luck would have it again, Paul met two bike mechanics from Grand Junction who offered him a ride there to their shop! So Paul caught a ride to Grand Junction where they took a deeper look at the hub and wheel and Paul made the decision to fly back to San Francisco.
Meanwhile the now three of us were setting a torrid pace and a nice cruise through what was now a beautiful Ponderosa Pine forest along the rim of outstanding canyons. Most of our higher elevation riding was along the rim of the Dark Canyon Wilderness area, definitely a place I want to go check out one day.
We eventually did come to the Goose Berry work station and the gate was locked. There was a sign on it that said only to enter under case of emergency and that the water was not a available to the public. So we snuck around the side of the gate to see if anyone was there. There were two little cute houses on the edge of a big grassy meadow but no one around. We found the two water faucets and began filling up all of our bottles, it was really nice water.
Back on the road we decided to ride the 5 miles of downhill and no more in search of a campsite, we had done our 50 miles for the day. A mile into the decent we found a beautiful spot right off the road for the night.