Day 35 – Chased by snow over Coney Summit, down to a treeline Yurt!

Camp Cataract was warm enough, but not very restful.  The wind didn’t die out until the middle of the night, and I just couldn’t seem to get much continuous rest.  So it goes when you’re sleeping above 12,000 feet and it feels like a winter storm is moving in.

 

It hasn’t felt like June all day.  Yet it’s nearly July.  Favorable weather for this piece of trail is a very rare thing indeed.

We got up and going early, trying to motivate to put wet socks and wet shoes back on.  We knew we were just going to get them wet again, anyway.  By the time we were moving and up over the pass, my thermometer read 36 degrees.  The snowmelt drains were half frozen, leading to some crunchy riding.

 

A large part of the morning was spent traversing the Lost Trail Creek drainage.  It’s Eszter’s favorite, she says.  I can see why.  Huge drop for us, mostly rideable with chunk and snow being the main obstacles throwing us off.

 

Only one drift gave us any trouble.  It was deep and ended with a steep drop to a tiny bit of trail.  I slipped once and was stopped by the built in ice axe on my bike (aka the pedal).  That made me pause and get super cautious.  I slid with my bike down the last part and just narrowly had enough purchase on the dirt below to stop both body and bicycle.

 

Eszter made the wise decision to not dupilcate my near blunders and went off to traverse around it.  That netted her a couple hundred feet of trail-less hike-a-bike.  Oof.

 

At Carson Saddle we were trying to decide which of the above peaks was Coney Summit — the high point of the Colorado Trail (and maybe the CDT, too?).  Rather than debate it, we got to climbing.

 

And about then the weather started to look pretty dire.  Storms were possible in the forecast, but it didn’t sound too serious for this far south.  Well, this high and treeless area of the divide doesn’t need much potential or likelihood in order to cook something up.  We’d already been very lightly snowed on coming down Lost Trail Creek.  Now the valleys beside and behind us were looking socked in with snow/fog.

 

And we were climbing up above 13,000 feet.  Perfect.  At least they weren’t thunderheads… yet.  It made for some tenseful riding/hiking as we clawed our way up the Carson Saddle Road, onto the singletrack that switchbacks up Coney.  Eszter put her music in.  I pulled out the rain jacket.

 

Cresting the high point we had a few low moments.  Feeling to the hands was minimal, ability to ride in the wind also minimal.  What exactly are we doing up here?

 

Taking a rare opportunity to see a magnificent corner of the world — that’s what.

 

The skies parted, the sun shone, the wind sort of died down.  We had several magic miles, along the crest of Coneys, the height of the continental divide, on top of the world, riding with the clouds.  It was almost too good to be true.

 

As we approached the descent, another round of snow seemed locked onto the ridgeline behind us.  Best keep moving.

 

The snowfields on the Coney switchbacks/scramble made it so we had to downclimb straight down.  I would not have wanted to try to pull a bike up that summit without access to the switchbacks.  But going down was not bad.

 

The scramble led us to miles of pinch-me descending.  Just pure white moment bliss.  I had to take a little video of the bliss-coasting even though I’ll probably never do anything with it.

 

The downhill took us to where we are now — a Yurt built for ski-touring and also open to trail travelers in the summer.  It’s right on the edge of the trees with a big view, bunks and woodstove.

 

We could have pushed on and made Lake City today, no problem.  But how often do you get a chance to stay in a Yurt at treeline??  It feels so nice to be out of the wind.

 

We just met our friends Alfredo, Sailor and Friendly Neighbor.  They are flipflopping part of the CDT in order to avoid snow.  It was a fortunate chance encounter.

 

Lake CIty is next, then we tackle the Los Pinos Wilderness detour and the dreaded Sargents Mesa!