May 29, 2025
Day 16: Hike-a-bike
4,176 ft of vert
Camped at ~14,600 ft
9 hrs from camp to camp
It was cloudy when we woke up but not raining, and there were patches of potentially clear sky—a good enough forecast to attempt the pass and the high riding today. A chance of rain, particularly in the afternoon, was in the forecast for today so we weren’t sure how far we would get. We eventually got a few glorious rays of morning sun at camp and it wasn’t even that chilly of a morning for camping above 14,000 ft. Powered by our daily regimen of coffee, green juice, probiotics, oats with all the fixings (peanut butter, cinnamon, dried fruit and a wee bit of granola), we left camp around 7:45am for a morning of climbing. The first climb of the day was a steep one—up to over 16,200 ft. The last few miles were a lot of switchbacks. It felt like we were crawling to the top. We could see the top of the pass, but we were only inching our way up slowly—taking breaks as needed to catch our breath. When we finally arrived at the top, it was stunning! The clouds had cleared and we could see all around us. The sun was evening poking out to warm us up! We took some pictures, had a snack and layered up before heading down the other side.
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It’s so cool to see the roads line the valley. The roads are carved into the side of the rock, painting the way to the bottom of the valley. We descended and eventually biked into more rolling terrain. Despite being around 15,000 ft a lot of the day, it felt like we were just in the hills. There were lots of plateaus and farms and ponds. We wound our way through these rolling roads and kept going until we reached a mine. That’s when things got hard again. This road was bad—chunky and loose and steep. We were pushing our bike for a good chunk of it. Megan got a little grumpy. It’s slow going, which is particularly frustrating when clouds are rolling in and we were in need of water. We reached the semi top of the climb and Erin walked uphill a ways to go get water (thanks to the iOverlander app for alerting us to this). Once we had water, we knew we could camp anywhere if the rain came in. However, soon after getting water, a vicious dog charged us. After throwing some rocks at it and yelling, it eventually turned around. It’s scary how the dogs come out of nowhere and run and bark at you. We still haven’t gotten used to this. We biked through miles of sheep and sheep poop before coming to an intersection with a better road—woohoo! We had lunch at this intersection: our typical lunch of crackers and avocado (although this time a HUGEEE avocado), followed by various cookies and chocolate for lunch dessert. Sublime is our favorite chocolate here by far. After lunch, we headed out for another short-ish climb, that felt long-ish. Our timing chain fell off randomly, but we were able to secure it again.
We finally reached some downhill, which was fairly bumpy. The downhill turned into undulating terrain - some smooth, some bumpy. We were riding up-river along a steep canyon. We had planned to camp at a specific spot, but we reached that spot around 3pm and decided we could continue another 10 miles to a lake instead. Luckily, the last 10 miles were fairly mild. Megan was having a hard day. The chunkiness and the bumps and the hiking make the day quite exhausting. Luckily, weather never came, so we were able to reach the campsite by the lake around 4:30. We had a three course meal: two types of chips for an appetizer, followed by ramen and a glorious Backpacker’s Pantry pesto pasta (thank you, Steve!!), ending with cookies and Sublime chocolate. Yum! We reenergized ourselves after the challenging day by listening to some Taylor Swift, mixed in with sound of sheep bahhhhs nearby.
Today's ride: 39 miles (63 km)
Total: 464 miles (747 km)
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