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DAY
TWENTY-FOUR COMMENTARY
That? Oh, that’s just the sound
of the Gunnison River
roaring through the Black Canyon, two hundred feet away (and fifty feet
below) my tent.
Rewind, please -- let’s get out of Glenwood Springs first!
Departure
from the hostel was only so-so; the move to the dorm-style room had
left me somewhat disorganized, and therefore running back and forth
between the it and the trailer out front. Truth is I was still on the
premises past check-out time, but not by much, and it didn’t upset
Clarisa, manager on duty. It was also good because I was able to say
“sayonara” to a few of the nicer folks who either worked or sort of
lived there on a longer-term basis.
Conversations the night
before with John, the well-traveled manager for the evening, confirmed
that my desired use of the “Kebler Pass” to the town of Crested Butte
would not be too much for the rig to handle, and was a nicely direct
route as well. Whether or not a particular pass was, um, “passable” was
in no way a trivial matter: in a state where some mountain roads are
only open for two or three months of the year, signs all along the way
out of Glenwood indicated things like “Independence Pass Open”,
“passage unlawful without proper equipment”, and the like. The first
pass I needed to take, McClure Pass, was fully paved and reached an
elevation of only some 9,000 feet; perhaps to show how little of a test
that such a profile offered, there was apparently a bicycle race going
on in the other direction.
Reaching the start
of Kebler Pass -- which, BTW, rendered the above map
inaccurate,
because I could force neither MapQuest nor Yahoo Maps to
understand that the road was actually open -- I had a conversation with an amiable retired police officer who gave me
some details on the route I was about to encounter. It was gravel, but
it was also usually graded around the time it opens for the season, so
for the most part it was not a loose surface. It was perhaps a little
tricky when wet, but the sky looked to be clear of rain clouds, and at
any rate I was now committed to going up there regardless, so off I
went.
After climbing rather sharply about two miles in, the road offered gorgeous views in
all directions
as promised. I was passed by, and then later (twice) caught up with two
friendly gents riding their motorcycles from Dallas on a two-week jaunt
around the Midwest. While I didn’t love the sign
I soon saw, in truth the road was rather tricky already. Although the
gravel had indeed been pressed down for the most part, the physics of
rolling tires pushing towards the outsides of the curves served to form
the gravel into ridges on the surface. As they seem to catch a
motorcycle’s front tire at just the wrong moment and rob one of the
precise steering control one would like, this is bad enough on a flat,
straight road, let alone a twisting, climbing one.
Then it started to rain.
Not
hard, but enough to fully dampen the road even through the beautiful
and lengthy thicket of aspen trees it passed through. The cows
didn’t seem to care, but I did, because now the road surface became
that much trickier. Were I to catch a ridge, I’d have to be very
careful about how forcefully I’d try to correct the new, unplanned
route -- if I fed too much directional change to the front tire, it
might slide once it bounced down off of a ridge, and put me right down
to the ground. Almost certainly damaging the hitch apparatus beyond
on-site repair, let alone possibly causing injury, in doing so.
Ah, the nuances of motorcycling.
But what could I do? I wasn’t going to go back
-- not that that would have gotten me away from the ridges at any rate
-- and there wasn’t really any room to pull over and stop, not that I
wanted to sit there until (‘if”?) it stopped. So I pressed on, in
extremely gentle fashion, and white-knuckled it in a few places where
the road turned more quickly than I thought it would and where,
naturally, the ridges were worse than I expected.
Mercifully the rain stopped after the crest --
and right after I got back to pavement, of course --and I
entered the town of Crested
Butte.
Now, people, I know this is starting to sound like a broken record, but
here’s the deal: the historic downtown section of town was so inviting,
I knew that if I got off that bike to take even one (1) picture, I’d be
off the bike for several hours. As I did not have several hours to
give, I therefore did not
get off the bike
at Crested Butte. Well, except to get gas, some white spray paint (for
reasons which will be explained in due time), and some very expensive
beef jerky (“Ray’s”, a local brand which was very good, and perhaps the
second best I’d ever had behind Angelo’s up in Sonoma County, CA.)
For
the remainder of my riding day there were constant threats of rain, but
little in the way of follow-through. There was an informative (and
opportune) state park and rest stop at the foot of the Blue Mesa
Reservoir (and/or Lake), the largest lake in the state of Colorado.
Here I used the rest room; got a good estimate of remaining travel
time; thrilled to the fact that it chose to drizzle only once I got
inside, then stopped when I again emerged; and polished off a Red Bull
to counter a sudden bout of drowsiness. Shortly thereafter a bridge
crossed the lake and the formation known as Dillon's Pinnacles
loomed
above the other side. The nearby town of Sapinero consisted of little
more than cute little homes hugging the hillside and offering their
occupants a beautiful view of the lake and the Pinnacles.
I
arrived at Black
Canyon of the Gunnison National Park shortly
afterwards. Now, my original plan -- before I audibled the second day
in Glenwood Springs -- was to hike down into the canyon and camp for
two consecutive overnights down at one of the undeveloped sites closest
to the river. As this hike would take a minimum of three hours, in
addition to camp set-up, I would no longer be doing it now that I only
had one overnight to work with. Not only that, the Park Ranger at the
entrance said it was probably getting to be too late for just a
round-trip hike even without the camping angle. She said I could choose
to stay at the South Rim Campground up here, or at the riverside
campsites down at the end of the East Portal Road.
That road
was too extreme for cars with trailers, which in fact were banned, but
as the length of my rig was only 16 feet I could legally choose to take
the whole thing down there. The Ranger also suggested that I could drop
the trailer at the upper rim campground and scoot down for a visit with
just the bike, if I was concerned about the braking power necessary to
safely negotiate the road. Well, I gave the upper campground a quick
check and wasn’t thrilled with what I saw -- nice enough and
fully-equipped, but offering no views of the canyon from there,
disappointing compared to what I had originally wished to do. I was
about to start riding around on the rim to visit the overlooks when I
thought, seriously, I can just use engine braking to make it down the
East Portal Road in one piece, end up camping overnight by the river
just like I wanted to, and check out the rest of the rim overlooks
tomorrow morning when perhaps it would be nicer weather anyway.
The
road’s 16% downgrade was definitely a little hair-raising, as even in
first gear the bike was pulled to speeds up to about 40 MPH on the
longest straightaways. I feathered the brakes only when absolutely
necessary and, while they were just a bit on the spongy side once I
reached the bottom (1,800 feet below), there was never any real danger.
Although
it was made clear that we were definitely now in bear country, the
decision to come down to the river was a winner, as this picture of my dining room for
the evening will indicate -- are you kidding me, or
what? So not only did I decide to prepare my favorite of the dinner
selections I had brought along -- the chicken & rice -- but I
figured it would also be OK to use the last of the Lipton Iced Tea mix
to wash it down. (The one-match stove lighting affair, easily the
cleanest since back on Day One, was icing on the cake.)
After the meal
was finished, out of nowhere I was offered a drink of Grand Marnier by
two extremely friendly folks named Vicki and Alain, perhaps in return
for my offer of the use of my sponge to help clean their pans of the
cooking residue -- of the two trout that Alain had caught in the river
just a little earlier!
People, I certainly wished to take
them up on their offer, but I felt very guilty about not having
anything to make available in return, so I ran back to the trailer and
fetched the Crown Royal Cask No. 16! I figured that the link to France
(aged in cognac barrels) might be of passing interest to Alain, his
having been born in Paris. Now, exactly how
a city boy, such as he was, would subsequently become such an
accomplished angler was never made clear, but the three of us spent a
very enjoyable evening chatting about life, travel, coincidence,
meeting people, and Airstream camper trailers. Shortly before the party
broke up, the sun came shining through the clouds, illuminating the
tops of the peaks opposite our site of the river.
When it
came time to retire, the climate was perfect for sleeping, and because
I had thoroughly read the National Park Service's “Getting Used to the
Darkness” handout, I wasn’t
even scared over how dark it was down there once all the lights were
out!
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