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| The kind of roads I was riding on to reach Mount Sunflower |
Sorry folks for the lag in between
blogs. I have been slacking off with
writing them. Since Brent’s last entry I
have reached 2 more summits met a ton of cool people and had some very
interesting days of riding. When he left
I was in Colorado Springs where I stayed for a couple days in order to hang out
with some of my friends that I worked with this summer at Fort Carson. I was also there in order to avoid some of
the cold weather that was coming through.
There was one day where the high did not even reach double digits but
thankfully I was able to just hang out inside all day. Eventually I got myself roused and headed out
for my next highpoint in Kansas.
While I was able to leave the
coldest weather behind me I still had to deal with brutally cold temps along
with some wind on my journey east. My
first day out I was not even able to make it to my chosen destination but
thankfully a family in Simla, CO were more than welcoming to me as they invited
me into their home. The next day I made
it to Limon where I was originally supposed to be and found yet another
welcoming household who were on couchsurfing.org. It was a little warmer for my ride the next
day but not by much. However, I was
lucky enough to have a tail wind which made my 80 miles ride go by pretty fast
and allowed me to stay a little warmer since I didn’t have to compete with the
wind. Upon reaching town a gentleman
from warmshower.com offered to put me up in the local motel since he was not
able to host me at his own house while I was passing through.
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| For those that may be wondering this was in Colorado not Kansas. |
This is where it starts to get
interesting. Plan was to ride into
Kansas, hit the high point, and then head back towards Colorado for the
night. I knew I was going to have to ride
on some dirt roads in order to reach Mount Sunflower but did not realize that
meant over 40 of my 80 miles were going to be on dirt roads. Some of which were snowy or muddy. Most of this went pretty well until I was
riding down a decent sized hill and crossed over a snow patch. This is when my front wheel lost traction and
slid out from under me. I was lucky
enough to have been riding in running shoes so it was easy for me to bail. The bike however had some damage done to it. Bent handle bars which in turn screwed up the
cable for shifting, mud in the gears and shifter, and one of the attachment
points on a rear pannier broke off. Nothing
major, but still time consuming to get everything figured out and fixed to the
best of my abilities. After about an
hour though it was off towards the summit again without any other issues. That night I ended up staying at a local fire
station in Cheyenne Wells, CO.
After reaching Mount Sunflower I
continued my journey south in order to find warmer lands and to hit up the
highpoint in Oklahoma, Black Mesa. The
next couple days all kind of blur together.
It was never that warm and it seemed like there was a lot of headwinds
that I had to ride through. Eventually
though I would make it to Kenton, OK where I would stay at the Hitching Post
B&B. I stopped by their house on the
way in to town to meet them and I was glad I did. They were a very nice family that has lived
on that ranch for over 60 years. They
also fed me a pretty good lunch while there.
They happily put me up in a cabin they had for the next two days. On one of these days I headed out to Black
Mesa, which was a 6-mile bike ride followed by 4 miles of hiking in order to
reach the summit. The hiking was very
straightforward although one thing that made it a little tricky was that it was
very muddy. It seemed like my shoes
weighed a couple pounds heavier thanks to all the mud that stuck to them. This also made it pretty slippery at
times. Another issue I had was that I
knew there was some rain coming in that afternoon so I was moving at a pretty
good pace in hopes of getting back before it rained. When I reached the summit I could see the
storm clouds making their way towards me so I didn’t get to spend too much time
up on top even though on a clear day the views would have been
spectacular. So I snapped a couple
pictures, had a snack, and then headed out.
It threatened to let loose on me a couple times as I made my way back to
the house but all I ever got were a couple light sprits. As soon as I got in the cabin though it
decided to finally let loose which was fine with me since I was warm and dry.
That’s about it so far. The one last piece of news to let yall know
about is that instead of climbing Wheeler Peak which is the high point in New
Mexico now, I’ve decided to put it off for a later period in the trip. According to the ski patrol at Taos Ski
Valley everything is really unstable up there right now and they are expecting
even more snow on Sunday and Monday which would be about the time I’d be trying
summit. Another big reason for not just
waiting it out is that my dad has bought me a plane ticket to go home for Christmas,
which leaves out of Albuquerque on the 24th. So I’ve decided to just head that way in
order to make sure I’m there for that.
Until next time though if you’re in
the mountains go out and have some fun in all the new snow. If you’re not in the mountains . . . . . well
you should just be in the mountains.
- Michael Hunter
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