August 13th
Route: Dry Creek Basin to Wedding Bell Hut
Mileage: ~33 miles
Elevation Gained: 2,500 Ft.
Lost riders: None!
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| "we're riding there...." La Sal range can barely be seen on the horizon |
Today, we put some effort into making our own good luck. The heavy rain from yesterday afternoon and evening, and the cloudy skies when we turned in for bed, prompted us to (a) choose the preferred route for rainy days (b) leave earlier so that we would be off the mud prone roads before the rains came (this was also the advice on the SJH route sheet, which we were learning to read thoroughly!). On the whole, we did pretty good and with the exception of Brice and Joe (who had taken the "Mexico Mines" single track alternate) and got about 30 minutes of rain at the end of the day - but that's all it took to create LOTS of mud. We were rolling a bit after 7 under threatening skies. Fortunately, the rain from last night had soaked in enough and mud was not much of an issue. We kept our fingers crossed and kept (gingerly) pedaling.
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| We definitely weren't in the mountains anymore |
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| Heading towards highway 141 |
After getting through the first 10 miles of dirt roads without too many problems (or rain) we hopped onto the desolate highway 141 - the first pavement of the trip. This took us to the "gas roads alternate" and through some active natural gas extraction operations (aka "fracking"). Good roads and nice scenery (despite the occasional gas well) and a fun section of scenery between dirt roads.
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| Not bad, eh? |
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| No rain = happy riders |
A little more routefinding, a paved road here and there and pretty soon we were nearing the Dolores River and some outstanding views.
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| La Sal Mountains getting a little closer |
Once we arrived at the hut, the views were spectacular! This hut had the best views of them all.
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| View of the Dolores river from the hut |
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| Our humble hut |
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| Porch life |
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| Didn't mention running with scissors..... |
With the exception of Joe and Brice (who got hammered during the last 30 minutes of their ride) we somehow dodged any significant rain. But.........As soon as we all crawled into bed at 8:00 that night it started raining - and it rained HARD all night. It stopped around daybreak, but knew our route would be pretty soggy and prepared ourselves for a long day.
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| This was the view that greeted us in the morning.... Notice the heavy runoff in mid left of picture |
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