Day 36 – Into Lake City, via mega super awesome singletrack descent? Pinch me.

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Coming to conciousness, I slowly realized where I was.  I had slept hard.

Oh, I’m warm and in my sleeping bag, but I’m inside!  Eszter is getting the woodstove going again.  I’m in a yurt, right on the continental divide, at nearly 12,000 feet.  Snow capped mountains are all around, green meadows and huge views.

It was a treat to fix and eat breakfast inside and out of the wind.  I walked down to the meadow to collect more water.  Eszter grabbed more kindling.  I split a few logs with the axe.  We slowly got organized to leave, savoring every moment, but knowing that our limited food supply meant we couldn’t dally long.

Ever since we had arrived the topic of how we were going to get to Lake City would pop up occasionally.  Eszter summed it up best by saying, “why are we even discussing it?  We both know we are going to end up taking the trail.”

She was right.  Choice 1 was to continue on the CT/CDT that we had ridden before and isn’t actually singletrack, then drop on a dirt road partway to a highway into Lake CIty.

Choice 2 was a massive singletrack descent to the Lake Fork of the Gunnison River, which feeds into Lake City.  I could find no mention of anyone riding or hiking the trail online, and had never noticed a trail up there before. 

Recall that the last two times we saw a massive singletrack descent on a map and took a gamble on it, we got burned.  Usually by trees knocked down on the trail and forgotten tread.

You might think we had learned our lesson by now, but the call of a new trail and a huge descent is just too hard for us to resist, just as it was before.

It didn’t start out well.  Absolutely no detectable tread in the meadow.  Just a sign.  We hugged the left side of the meadow and found some clearings, but no trail sign.  I pulled out the topo map on my phone which seemed to indicate the other side.  We backtracked around the alders, hugging the other side of the trees until we found tread!

It looked good, but we  kept our expectations appropriately low.

I smiled when I saw cut logs, boot tread patterns in the mud and heavily benched trail.  Someone built this well.  Maybe it’ll last?

The further we went the more the smile grew.  How is this possible? 

I believe the expression goes, if you gamble enough times, eventually you’ll win.

We won.  Big time.

One of the best descents in Colorado I have ever ridden.  I was ready to give it an award by the end.  It was almost as if it was built to be a mountain bike trail.  Nice benchcut, moderate grades, the trail used its elevation well.  Some sections reminded me of the Tiger Run segment of the CT… before it got overridden by brake bumps.

It felt like we’d dropped endlessly but midway down I had to break the bad news to Eszter — we still had more than 1000 feet to drop.

Wow.  How do people not know about this?  Or maybe they do but they are trying to keep it secret…

It would be a great way to loop segments 22 and 23.

At the bottom we were pinching ourselves the whole way down to Lake City.  Did that really just happen?  Could we be that lucky?

It got even better — breakfast was still being served (we keep missing it) at the Tic Toc cafe and it was the best fresh toast of the trip.  We found the hostel right by and it was full of thru-hikers, some of which we had met much earlier in the trip.  A short walk led us to the ice cream shop, just to round things out.

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Lake City is a beautiful little town, and one I’ve never been to.  Apparently they have really good food, too.  So glad we came to resupply here!

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