On Sunday I got to take the whole day and go riding for Father's Day (my first as a dad). I was
planning on heading up to Crested Butte, but my fellow riders had to bail. I figured I'd just go
solo, but had one more idea. I called up a friend I haven't ridden with in a while to see if he
wanted to go. He was already going to do an exploratory ride East of town in an area I don't know
well. Sounded like a good chance to get it know it better, so I bagged the Butte and Headed East
with Dave and his girlfriend Carolyn. Dave makes maps. Damn good ones. He rides with a GPS and takes
that data and overlays it on topo maps and satellite images. He has a giant HP plotter he uses to
print them. The end result is some really nice imagery. He's the author of the current best Hartman
Rocks map and is working on his next MTB mapping project for the area between Gunnison and the
Continental Divide. We drive out to an old dirt pass and head up a few miles, consulting the map and
GPS as we go. Dave parks the car near an old corral and we get ready and start up a jeep trail.
We're looking for the Tank 7 trail, named for an old water tank associated with the now gone
railroad that once came through here. We climbed some switchbacks in the hot sun for a while,
stopping to look at the GPS every so often. Dave says "It should be over there" pointing to a
thicket of trees with no detectable trail. We look around and decide we had come up the wrong
drainage and turn around and head back down to where we began. We try another trail that climbs up
to the old railroad grade. It's pretty overgrown and doesn't look like it gets any human traffic. We
turn off the grade into the hillside, climb some more, and it eventually peters out. Again we turn
around and start over. We've just traveled 6.5 Miles, climbed 850 Ft. in about an hour and are still
trying to find the route and are about 100 Yards from the car. Finally, we get on the real RR grade
next to a creek and start making a little progress. We pass the foundation of an old water tank next
to the grade. Must be Tank 7. Continuing on we cross some old RR bridges and wade across the creek
where the bridges had fallen. A couple more miles and we hit a real trail with a sign - it's the
Tank 7 trail. It touches the road here and we realized we started in the wrong place and could have
saved a lot of time and effort if we had parked here. Oh, well. At least we found
it.The climbing begins immediately with steep switchbacks on loose dirt. We can ride sections
between the turns, but the switchbacks and not ridable going up (maybe not even down, they are
steep and very loose). The mosquitoes are swarming around me, biting my elbows and the backs of
my knees. I had put on repellant earlier, but the sweat and creek crossings must have washed it
off. Too bad I left the rest in the car. Every so often the trail flattens out and we can cruise
in the middle ring for a bit. We saw a lot of Elk on several occasions. I also saw a family of
otters or something like that. Marmot-sized but longer and fast. A big pair and four smaller ones
following. Cool. Most of the climbing is granny gear slogging through big rocks or hike-a-bike.
We cross the creek more times than I could keep track of and get pretty muddy. The mosquitoes
continue to drain my blood. They seem to prefer me to the others, which Dave thanks me for. We
stop periodically to have a snack, check the map and GPS before it died. The climbing continues
up to about 11,000'. That's about 3000' in five Miles. The view from the top is beautiful. The
trees open up and we find ourselves on the Continental
Divide. There's a little breeze and this keeps the bugs at bay for a few minutes. After some
confusion we find a trail sign indicating our turn off for the downhill on the Big Bend
trail. The trail is not visible in the open park and we go from post to carin to post for a
while until we find the beaten track and get on our bikes again. The downhill is not unlike
the uphill. Steep and rough. Really rough. I'm glad I have some suspension, but I'm jealous
of the 7" Dave has on his Stinky Primo. How he manages to get that thing up the hills is
beyond me. It weighs about 45 Lbs. There are also a few great, fast sections of trail that I
try to savor, but they end pretty quickly. We loose our route a couple more times on the
descent and climb some more to get back on track. Near the bottom we have to cross some
fences and I almost fall during a particularly tricky crossing. Could have been nasty on
that barbed wire with a leg on each side. I crashed once when a fast DH suddenly turned into
deep, powdery dirt and my front wheel got away from me. Now I'm covered in the dust that
stuck to my muddy, sweaty body. Finally we see the car and find our way across a flooded
pasture to it. We rode from 11:30 until 5:30 and only went about 20 Miles. This was one of
the hardest 20 Miles I've done. A fun adventure but I don't think I'll be back to this route
anytime soon. The Misses had dinner waiting when I get home. A big ol' steak. A great end to
a fun adventure. I would have slept very soundly if it wasn't for all the mosquito bites and
my sore shoulder from the wreck.
--
Matt
"Gravity. It's not just a good idea, it's the law!"