Things are getting hot out there!

We were up early ( nothing new there!) and heading out of Breckenridge by 6am with a big day planned - Salida 150kms down the road! It started with a great climb up the Boreas Pass with amazing views back out over the valley we could see hundreds of ski runs over all the hills and the city scattered below in the trees. 


It was quite a gentle climb and we eventually reached the top - a new height record 11482ft (3499m)
We discovered it was an old train line and there is quite a bit of history around that area for gold mining.




After the pass we turned onto the gold dust trail - it would have been awesome on my full suspension stump jumper but not quite so much fun on my fully rigid, fully loaded tourer ! Still fun though. 
As we started to move down the pass we could smell more and more smoke and as we left the forest we could start to see the haze of forest fires south of where we were. As we cycled towards Hartsel it turned quite basiny and very dry. It is easy to see why there is such a high fire alert .


Coming into Hartsel we could see a fire burning in the hills just behind and the afternoons ride was punctuated by the sight and sounds of water planes and helicopters flying overhead. The winds were strong by this point and the roads were rutted. It was a tough ride into the afternoons head wind which stuck with us all the way to Salida.
The gentle climb turned into a walk at times as we pushed into the relentless wind and the only thing that kept us going was the thought of our planned rest day the next day and a sleep in!
We eventually made it to Salida about 7.30pm


Dinner then a well deserved shower as it looked like we had had an accident with some bad spray on tan! 

The following morning we said good bye to half our riding team- Russ and Kane are carrying on today as their deadline is fast approaching( 12July) and they are hoping to get to PieTown by then. We are lucky to have a few more days up our sleeve and will spend the day recovering and making a plan for the rest of our trip south, and of course its the 4th of July ! So we can’t possibly bike on a national holiday!!! 

The link below to to our givealittle page to help get kids out enjoying cycling :

Comments

  1. PaGeJuly 4, 2018 at 12:51 PM

    Enjoy your sleep in...well deserved....then celebrate 4th July....always a fun time.....great pies in Pietown......Pat and Geoff Olliver

    ReplyDelete

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