A normally reliable source said:I haven't ridden in those mountains, wherever they are . . .
Quoted message said:. . . wet , muddy
conditions, and such conditions rarely occur at high altitudes, or at
least that's my impression. Maybe your mountains are an exception to
this, I dunno.
Dear Sheldon,
The San Gabriels run right up next to Los Angeles.
I dunno about how wet they are, though massive mud slides following
forest fires and torrential rains make for entertaining reading if you
like John McPhee (See "The Control of Nature" collection of his New
Yorker pieces).
But in Colorado, things tend to be dry low altitudes--say Pueblo, out
on the Great Plains at around 5,000 feet, with the cactus, antelope,
yucca plants, tarantulas, and so forth.
It's up in the Rocky Mountains where things are muddy, wet, and
miserable.
In summer, it rains up there. In fall and winter, it snows. When spring
comes, the snow melts. People up in the mountains own raincoats.
The ski resorts are up high because that's where there's lots of snow.
Down in Pueblo, two feet of snow is a rare disaster. Up above Salida, a
hundred miles into the mountains, it's not enough to open the Monarch
ski resort at over 10,000 feet.
Typical mountain trails in Colorado follow and cross endless streams,
snowbanks, and bogs. It's out in the foothills where the desert
conditions are found. The Great Plains are dry because they're pretty
much in the rain shadow of the Rockies. Damp air from the Pacific drops
most of its moisture as it passes eastward over the repeated
north-south mountain ranges.
For example, I've been riding motorcycles up the front of the Greenhorn
mountain range for years on the Snow Slide trail. It starts half-way up
the front of the mountains near San Isabel, climbs about two thousand
feet, and reaches a huge large flat area on top, near a steep boulder
field running down the front of the mountain range that's visible for
fifty miles out on the plains. The rocks are usually snow-covered well
into summer, so it's known as the Snow Slide.
At the top, you ride across what's often a mile-long bog as late as
August to reach the Greenhorn Road that runs along the top of the
mountain range.
The trail is the dotted black "pack trail" heading southwest from the
highway just below
the red-circled "165" a bit south of San Isabel:
http://terraserver.microsoft.com/image.aspx?T=2&S=14&Z=13&X=154&Y=1312&W=3
The trail starts half-way up the mountainside at about 2700 meters, or
8860 feet.
The wide bog on top is the huge white area at over 3405 meters, or
11,170 feet. The solid black line south of it is the Greenhorn Road, a
wide dirt fire road.
Of course, damp New England hasn't got any elevation as high as lowly
Pueblo, and my sister near Boston often mentions curious architectural
features like mud-rooms, where people leave their muddy boots.
Fenders, I hear, are routinely attached to bicycles in Massachusetts, a
fairly pointless bit of frippery for bicycling around Pueblo for about
350 days of the year.
But the fenders on my trials motorcycle are very useful up in the
mountains. After a typical ride, it takes about five minutes to hose
all the mud off the machine at a car wash.
Your mountains may be different.
Cheers,
Carl Fogel
