The plan was to climb West Spanish Peak, (13621’) on Tuesday with a couple of friends. Four miles and about a half mile of elevation gain; most of that in the last mile, straight up a steep, gnarly, scree slope. Nothing but shattered rock and steep. It is not a place for mortals, it is a path for the Gods, so I started preparing for the assault a week or so ahead of time. I am old and any serious physical endeavor, like mountain climbing requires plenty of preparation and training. Heck, it takes me 5 or ten minutes of bed yoga, just to get up and void my bladder, at least if I want to take normal size steps, on the way to the head, instead of little baby steps to protect the stiff ankles, sore knees and painful achilles tendon.
I was scheduled for departure, Tuesday morning at 4 A.M. The trip about 4 hours from the Cottage on the High Planes to the 11200′ trailhead on Cordova Pass. Vickie’s phone started ringing at about 1:30 though and I was about to have my plans changed. Her little sister was in dire straits and Vickie ran her to the Emergency Room at Keefe Memorial. She called and said they were going to fly her to Denver and I heard the thump, thump, thump of rotor blades shortly after that. We got everything sorted here and headed for Denver too. It took a couple days to determine that it was a rotten gallbladder causing sis’s problems and Vickie and I left Denver at 4 A.M. on Thursday to get back and deal with prior commitments out here in Emerald City.
Friday night, while sipping some Vino Tinto, I started thinking about the week of training and preparing for the climb. It’s a shame to waste it, I thought. That’s when the idea struck. What about a long gravel grinder – a 100K. In retrospect my mental faculties, like my joints probably need a little tune up. Anyway it seemed like a good idea on Friday night with the wine, so I planned a route and checked the weather forecast for the next few days. The sweet spot, if I wanted to take advantage of my training and preparation was Saturday morning. The one hitch in the plan was that I would be coming in against the wind. I have learned the hard way on the High Planes that it is always better to plan the ride to come in on the wind. The forecast though was for the wind to be barely out of single digits, so I figured, take the risk.
Off with the sun I went on Saturday morning, feeling strong. I stopped by the store and picked up an apple and some strawberry jam to go with the 4 large pieces of rye sourdough from the cottage. I also snagged a big chocolate macadamia nut bar that I had second thoughts about, it was like 4 bucks; I had some trouble rationalizing four dollars for a candy bar but ended up adding it to the bag after being encouraged by Vickie, “Go ahead, get the candy bar, they are really good.”
Down Main Street and onto the gravel, a light headwind but it was all down hill and smooth, firm gravel – what a beautiful morning. At about 6 miles, I saw a truck come onto the road, from the pasture to the west, the Old Wells, a favorite of the Cheyenne Indians that used to frequent the neighborhood a few hundred years ago and a stage stop on the Butterfield Overland Despatch. I recognized the truck, it was cousin Rayme’s green, 40 year old, cow feeding truck. He was out feeding the herd on this beautiful morning. We waved at each other as we passed in opposite directions. He smiled and I couldn’t help but think, that he was thinking; what’s this old lunatic on the bike up to, on this beautiful Saturday morning but recognized that it was my own thought, not his. I smiled too and pedaled on.
At about 10 miles, I make a left turn onto road Z and after a short push up a hill, I am ripping downhill on the wind at 25 MPH. It is still cool and tears are making little tracks along the side of my face, the gravel crunching under my tires, my mouth breaking into a grin. As I approach a farm house, I watch a couple of cock pheasant take flight from the road, next to the Trump and Gardner signs and head for the tree row. The farmers and ranchers out here on the High Planes are a conservative lot, you won’t find any Biden or Hickenlooper signs out here. As I ride by, another cock and a hen break from the ditch and float towards the trees. Another month until pheasant season I think, as I ride on.
As I approach the Pharo Ranch headquarters, I see a work truck pull off highway 385 into the field across from the ranch. As I get closer, I can see nearly 14 feet of Kemp brothers surveying the location. They are both close to 7 feet tall and cast long shadows across the High Planes in the early morning light. We wave at each other as I ride by.
There is a semi trailer at the ranch with a couple cowboys unloading cows into the corral. I stop and take a portrait of the wooden cowboy next to the road and it occurs to me that there is a slight family resemblance. The face of the wooden cowboy looks a little like Kit Pharo, though it was probably carved to look like Kit Carson. While I am stopped, I replace the wool stocking cap with the biker cap. The sun is up and it is starting to warm up.
I cross highway 385 and continue on the wind for a mile before turning north on county 43 and heading onto the Cheyenne Ridge Wind Farm. A left turn onto road CC and I am back on the wind and passing under the main transmission line that runs from the center of the wind farm, off to the city, far, far away. I find it interesting that we have this monstrosity in our backyard yet all of the renewable energy is piped off to some unsustainable city somewhere. It’s time to take off the wind breaker as the sun continues to climb the eastern sky.
Then it is north on 41 for a half dozen miles, across the county line from Cheyenne County into Kit Carson County, to the North Fork of the Smoky Hill river. I ride by a couple of old homesteads. The corn fields here have been freshly harvested and there are a few husks and cobs littering the road. I notice the wind is picking up, more than a breeze now, as the leaves flip and fly across the road. I can hear it as it rushes past my ears. I hit the hill on the north side of the river. I shift all the way down into granny gear for the first time, the road surface becomes soft sand, like at the beach and I struggle to keep the bike in a straight line. As I approach the top of the hill, the road firms up, I shift up a half dozen gears, raise out of the saddle and power up the hill. Twenty-five miles in and I am still feeling fresh and strong.
As I turn the corner onto Kit Carson County Road D, I recognize a pheasant spot that Max and I have hunted the last few years. It has been part of the Colorado Walk In program but I don’t see any signs and wonder if it has been removed from the program. Road D parallels the river and is a series of dips through the little drainages feeding the river. So all thoughts leave my mind as I focus on ripping down one side and powering up the other. I am on the wind, crunching gravel, focusing on my line. What a beautiful morning. It is warming up fast and I can feel the moisture building up inside the wind pants and was thinking about taking them off when the front tire started going soft. Then all the air came out fast and I was hard on the brakes to regain control. I had made it 50 kilometers or half way before the first flat, not bad.
I unloaded all the tools and food from the handlebar bag and spread them out on the windbreaker before inverting the bike. I traded the wind pants out for the shorts and took off my shoes to give the feet a break from the rigid confines of the cycling shoes. Sitting down on the jacket I slathered a couple pieces of sourdough in jam and ate heartily. I ate the apple while replacing the tube. Rejuvenated, I put my shoes back on, assembled the bike and loaded everything up and rode on. I was at the apex of the ride and turned south onto road 35. It was all south and east now, heading back to the Emerald City.
Road 35 was six miles of hell. It wasn’t bad enough that I had turned back into a quartering Southeast headwind, the road was all soft sand. Miles of soft sand with no good line. Zig zagging back and forth across the road searching for something firm to put under the tires but finding nothing. Not even able to keep the speedometer in double digits, I struggled along at 8 or nine miles an hour cussing the the soft sand and the wind. Then as I crossed the county line, back into Cheyenne County the front tire went flat again.
I inverted the bike and took the tube out. No spare this time, I had to find the hole and patch it. I pumped up the tube and put it close to my ear to hear the air escaping over the rising wind. It seemed to be blowing at least 15 or sixteen MPH. It wasn’t supposed to get above about 12 according to the forecast. I felt the pinpoint blast on my cheek before I heard it. I marked the spot, applied the patch and checked the tire for thorns before re-assembling it. Since I was already stopped I decided to eat the other two slices of bread, slathering them with as much jam as I could fit. I washed it down with some water from the second bottle. The first one was empty and this one was warm and only about half full, after washing down lunch.
I gathered everything up and was ready to continue on when I noticed the rear tire was a little soft. I got the pump out and topped it up wondering how long it would last. As I was just ready to leave a Suburban pulled up and asked if I was Ok, or if I needed anything. I said I was fine and was just patching a flat tire. They turned around and headed back to the farmhouse about a half mile back down the road. They must have seen me having trouble and drove down specifically to check on me. It wasn’t until they had left and I was back on the bike that the thought occurred to me that I could have refilled the water bottles.
The road firmed up, the sand behind me as I came to the end of road 35 and turned west for a mile to 34. It felt good being on the wind but I knew that I would have to make it all back up shortly as I continued my way south and east into the rising headwind. I considered the fact that I was at the highest elevation of the ride here at Landsman Hill. I remembered using a Tri-Station on the very top of the hill nearly forty years ago, when I first came to the High Planes as a exploration surveyor for Western Geophysical. Going down hill was little consolation with the rising wind. It wasn’t much of a hill, perhaps 300 feet over the 18 miles or so I had left to the Emerald City. The rear tire had gone soft again too. I knew I was going to need to stop and patch it but I didn’t feel like it just yet and I was getting 3 or 4 miles between fill-ups.
I passed back under the new transmission line, carrying all the stored energy of the wind off to the city and turned east onto road Z into the teeth of it. I could see all of the windmills facing just slightly south of east as they collected the wind, it was approaching 20 MPH. I had been on this road a few weeks previous on a training ride with a breeze out of the west and I remembered how pleasant the riding had been, ripping along dodging the bigger rocks on the mostly hard packed road. That was just a fond memory though today, as I struggled to maintain double digits on the speedo against the wind. The rocks looked a lot bigger and uglier than they did a few weeks ago. I tried to focus on the space between the rocks, instead of the rocks themselves. Zen and the Art of Gravel Grinding. The rear tire going soft again.
I decided to pull over and patch the tire. It would have been nice to have some shade but there is not much of that, out here on the High Planes. It was getting hot now too. I was supposed to be back at the cottage by now. A 100 kilometers, the plan was 5 hours, no problem. I was actually ahead of schedule at the halfway point. Not any more. I was sitting in the dirt at the side of the road, temperature approaching 90 degrees, with 15 miles to go. I thought perhaps the chocolate macadamia bar would improve my spirits, so I dug it out of the bag but it was mush. I tried to open it without getting chocolate all over my fingers. I just squeezed it out of the wrapper through a hole in the corner. I guess I should have eaten the candy bar first and saved the apple. I used almost all of the remaining warm water to wash the candy bar down and then took the tire apart.
I found two thorns through the tire casing, so I pumped the tube up, found a hole, patched it, then pumped it up again looking for the second leak. Nice, a double flat. I had one patch left in the little kit and 15 miles to go. I gathered everything up and headed east into the stiff breeze. A few miles down the road I came upon the skull of a cow wired to a large post. A gentle reminder of what the sun and wind can do out here on the High Planes. I tried both water bottles but they were completely empty, offering only a hint of plastic taste in the atomized spray that remained.
I could see the top of the grain elevators to the south in Emerald City about 10 miles away as I turned onto road 43. Damn, they looked so far away. I came to a short steep hill and tried to come out of the saddle and power to the top but the legs cramped up and I had to sit back down, shifting down to the lowest gear and struggling to keep the bike going forward, spinning the pedals, breathing hard, desperately trying to get the bike to the top of the hill without getting off and walking it. I made it but I was spent. I stopped on top of the hill and called Vickie. She answered thankfully on about the third ring. I casually asked what she was doing and she said she was busy. I said I didn’t think I was going to make it. It is hot, I am out of water and I am spent. She said that sounds like pretty poor planning. I agreed. I told her where she could find me or at least my body if she didn’t get there in time and she said she would head my way when she finished what she was doing and hung up. I texted her back, don’t forget water.
I mounted back up and pedaled on across the hill and then down into the Smoky Hill bottom. It was nice coasting down but not so nice pedaling up the other side. I dropped it into granny gear and kept on grinding, lips chapped, sunburned and thirsty, oh so thirsty. My thoughts went back to the bleached out cow skull. I came to a cattle drinker just off the road a bit. I got off the bike and laid it in the road and limped out to it. The water was green with moss, there were plenty of floaters and back swimmers too. I went around to the downstream side of the auto filler and took off the cap and sunglasses and plunged my head into the cold water. It felt oh so good. Just as I was considering trying a taste, I noticed a silver spec and a dust cloud coming down the road from the direction of the Emerald City and I knew it was Vickie in the Subie, coming to rescue me. I limped back over to the road and gave her a big lopsided grin. “Thank you for coming to my rescue.” She just smiled and handed me a quart of cold water. I put the bike in the back of the little truck and she drove the five miles to the cottage. She dropped me off and went to finish her business, as I pondered the wisdom of always finishing down wind.
