Saturday, May 28, 2011

Telluride & some riding out of Dolores

Not wanting to spend two consecutive days looking at ancient holes in the ground & so on, we went for the suggestion of a nice drive to somewhere "starting with T with a gondola up from town" - at least, that is what Valerie described it as.  I went for Telluride, about a seventy-mile drive north east of Cortez, mostly following the Dolores River - this worked well, as I wanted to ride at Dolores in the afternoon.

The mid-morning drive up the valley was just stunning with the sun really bringing out the contrast between the dark green ponderosa pines & the bright yellow-green of the deciduous trees lining the valley above the fast flowing river.
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We climbed up to over 3100m/10000ft to get over Lizard Head Pass & then down to Telluride. I didn't know too much about the town, except it was once a big mining town & is now a big ski resort/mountain town (sounds vaguely familiar).

Apparently their winter is holding on a bit, with two feet of snow a fortnight ago - but today was a stunner & I was excited to learn there are bike trails at the top of the (free) gondola that runs up to another little town (Mountain Village - possibly the least imaginative name in Colorado, what a shocker) & most of the ski lifts.
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My bike got its first ride on a gondola - been on plenty of chairlifts.  That's Telluride down there.
Alas, the visitor center was wrong - the bike trails were closed due to too much snow. So we made up for it with a very pleasant ride along the San Miguel River that runs through town. There is a Mountain Film festival on this long weekend, so town had a lot of life to it. We didn't have long, but I really liked Telluride - looks expensive though, Valerie saw one 5 bedroom, 7 bath house priced at a cool nine million.
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The drive back down the valley was just as pretty & I was riding by four o'clock. With four loops to choose from, I went for the longest & hardest option - to make sure I got my money's (not that I had to pay anything) worth. The riding was mostly at 2300m around a mesa top in more pine forest - it was nice to be riding in trees again. I'm not sure there was anything advanced about this intermediate-advanced level trail & the trail obviously wasn't as well designed as yesterday's ride at Phil's World. Since when is routing the trail down the middle of a creek a valid trailbuilding option? Occasionally there was a little bit of interest, but mostly it was pretty hohum - the surface was often rutted out by bike tires or six-inch deep horse hoof holes. Still, I got a fair bit of climbing in & time on the bike is time on the bike - I may be getting a little fitter as I did the first loop (2-4 hours) in 1.40 then went on to the adjoining beginner loop, hoping for some views of the mountains - but was disappointed. The highlight was the beautiful grassy meadows, different summer flowers, the very loud croaking of frogs & seeing some eagles gliding around - fantastic. After over 100 km of mostly singletrack riding in three days, I might have a day off the bike tomorrow as we go to Four Corners & Monument Valley.
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2 comments:

  1. Wow Brendo, you're visiting some amazing country! Thanks for sharing the photos. Would love to see a rough map of your journey so I can see where all these places are. Looking forward to seeing where you're heading next :)

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  2. Thanks Liz, there's so much to see in this massive country. We were just talking about your exciting new diary cows yesterday on the road. If you click on the link 'My SPOT' at the top right of my page you can see where I've activated my little GPS transponder in the last week. I do intend to put a Google map together when I've got the time... Maybe when we have two weeks in San Diego & a chance to sit down for a while.

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