Colorado Trip 2011 - The first few fun days (Part 1)

Actually, the excitement started in Oklahoma when the skies got dark and we pulled into a gas station where a news station storm chasing team was frantically running around.  We got a little concerned and got back on 40 - For the next hour, we listened to storm chasers broadcast on the radio spotting tornadoes forming and saying things like: "theres a lot of rotation here", "oh yea, this ones just formed and its going to cross I-40".  Fortunately we learned we were driving away from the tornadoes and the next hour of listening to the broadcast was entertaining instead of frightening.  If we had been 30 min or so later coming through there, we would have gone through some nasty stuff!

We made it to one of the best campgrounds in New Mexico (down in the Rio Grande gorge) that night around 11pm after 16 or so hours of driving:

View from campsite:

We did a short hike the next morning and immediately saw some a group of 3 big horn sheep which tried to pose for a picture:

Enjoying the hike:

After that hike, we went into Taos and got advice from Taos Cyclery (dude there was super nice).  For our intro to desert biking, we chose the Horsethief trail which has great views of the Rio Grande and some nice singletrack (with cacti to avoid riding over).  We thought this was going to be a pretty short ride but it turned out to be a little longer than expected, especially with reading the map and navigating.  After about 7 miles, we weren't quite sure where we were (which meant we didn't know if we had a few miles left or over 10).  Amanda's response was "I'm going to kill you!" which then turned into "I'm going to kill that bike shop guy!".  After that we figured out where we were and it wasn't too much further.

Start of trail:

One of many views:

Amanda riding:

Back at the campground:

The next day we headed into Carson Daly's Party Forest (also known as the Carson National Forest) southeast of Taos to ride the Woodpile trail (14 mile loop) which started around 8600' and topped out at 10,360'.  This was up out of the desert which was nice since we definitely prefer trees.  This was also a major navigational challenge with lots of second-guessing but ultimately we made it with only a few minor wrong turns.  The bike shop guy said "slow" on this loop was about 3 hours, so I assumed it would take about 5 - it took 6 hours and 20 minutes.  The trail was mainly doubletrack and the elevation made it difficult, but there were very pretty spots, and we saw more wildlife (1 brown bear, 2 assumed elk) than people (just us).

Yay trees!

Signs are very helpful in this forest:

Pretty aspen tunnels:

A nice meadow:

We camped that night down on the forest roads.  The next day, we attempted a hike from 10,000' up to 12,400'.  Everything was against us on this hike.  Carson Daly's Top 40 map (Also known as the National Geographic Carson National Forest map last revised in '96) was COMPLETELY wrong about where the trail head was, which resulted in an hour of bush-whacking looking for it.   We finally found it and started hiking up; I didn't waste much time before falling in a creek which my cell phone didn't seem to like too much. We kept going after that where we encountered a lot of knee-deep snow.  After lots of "Well, lets just go another 30 minutes", we finally gave up around 11,300'.  What was supposed to be a short morning hike took several hours and we didn't even make it to the top, but it was still fun.  After that we drove 4 hours to Durango, ate some "Serious Texas Barbeque", and pulled into the camping area I knew of around 10pm where there was fortunately one spot left.

This morning (Saturday), we're at a coffee shop in Durango planning out the rest of the trip.

Josh