Tour Divide Update: Day 20

165km - Horca, CO to Abiquiu, NM

What a roller coaster day 20 was - it spanned the full range of emotions from excitement and fulfillment, to frustration, anger and despair.

I felt fantastic after a good night’s sleep at Red Bear Haus in Horca, and headed out in good spirits - straight onto La Manga pass, which would be the final climb in Colorado.

The climb was decently long, but had a moderate ingredient and was actually quite pleasant to climb with some nice views along the way. I reached the top feeling great, and began a short descent before turning left onto the section of the Continental Divide Trail.

Shortly thereafter, there was a mental high point as I crossed the border from Colorado into New Mexico. Another milestone, and a big one as New Mexico is the final state on the route.

The next six hours were hell.

Immediately after turning off the main road, the trail began to deteriorate. At first, this was fine but as I climbed towards Brazos Ridge the trail soon turned to loose shale on a steep climb that in many places was simply unrideable.

To make matters worse, after finishing that climb, the trail then turned into singletrack for the remainder of the CDT section which was probably the most unpleasant part of the entire ride from my perspective.

After starting out as rideable albeit challenging singletrack, the trail evolved through a series of different challenges, from extremely rocky, technical sections to one that was narrow, covered in loose rock and with a vertical drop on the right side.

This portion of the day was not enjoyable and in my opinion not safe for bikes. “Fine for hikes, not for bikes” was how I described it to others.

I found myself getting extremely angry at its inclusion in the course, which was a change just made last if I understand correctly, and seemed to have no benefit or purpose. I would strongly advocate for changing it back to whatever it was previously, as it’s only a matter of time before someone gets badly hurt on that portion and I consider it irresponsible to include it on the route. I heard from some people that they navigated that section at night, which left me speechless.

After traversing that dangerous ridge, the trail dropped down into a valley before the singletrack climbed back up the other side into a wooded area via steep singletrack full of downed trees, a section which I once again found myself walking.

Even once the trail did become more rideable, there were frequent fallen trees that required hefting the bike up and over (or under) or bushwhacking around them. As a result of this I once again sustained damage to my rear derailleur, which cost me access to my lowest gears for the remainder of the day. Not ideal (to put it mildly) when you’re doing a race that is substantially made up of climbing significant mountain passes. Pretty sure I came up with some new swear words aimed at the people who advocated for this to be added to the route.

I finally exited the trail mid/late afternoon, and returned to dirt roads that led past Hopewell Campground and along through a scenic forest section.

Unfortunately I was not able to enjoy the riding much due to my missing my lower gears, and I was forced to get off and walk frequently. I don’t know how single speed riders do this race.

By this point, I was almost out of food, and getting a bit concerned about my ability to resupply or even eat for the evening, so I put my head down and essentially sprinted for the next two hours over rolling hills and a few decent climbs in order to try to make it to the town of El Rito before its one restaurant closed at 8pm.

Along the way was the town of Vallecitos, which is notorious for its packs of dogs that will chase and sometimes attack cyclists. Fortunately I didn’t experience that on this day (although I did in later days) and I pushed through that town, and along a very picturesque descent down to El Rito.

I rolled into town about 15 minutes before the restaurant closed, and was able to order a bunch of food - a full plate of nachos that I devoured on the spot, along with 2L of Coke, a burger and fries and a burrito to go for later that night and the next morning.

The El Farolito restaurant in El Rito is known as one of the best “hole in the wall” Mexican places around. While I ended up getting a lot of my food to go and eating it cold the next day, I don’t doubt that it was great to start with (the nachos I ate on-site were tasty), and the atmosphere in the restaurant was fantastic. I enjoyed chatting with the number of locals while I was waiting for my food, both young and old, and those born and brand new to the area.

There was no accommodation available in El Rito so I made the decision to push on to the next town of Abiquiu - about 30km away. With no headwind and a long descent, I made good time and rolled into town at around 10pm where I was able to secure the last (very expensive) room at the Abiquiu Inn.

I then found myself in a situation where I had to decide what to do with the bike: do I suck it up and try to power through without my climbing gears until the next bike shop in several days, or do I try to handle repairing it myself? If the latter, do I work on it now after a brutal, emotionally exhausting day when I’m already wiped, or get up early and take a run at it the next morning?

I decided that worrying about the state of the bike would keep me awake no matter what, so I was better off attempting the repair that night, so took as much gear off the bike as I could, flipped it over in my hotel room and got started.

I’d never replaced a rear hanger before, but it was pretty straightforward and only took a few minutes. Unfortunately, it made no difference to my gear issues, so it appeared something else was the issue. After trying various things until around 12:30 AM, I decided to call it a night and give it another shot in the morning. I set the alarm early, and after showering and getting my gear ready I hit the bed about 1am.

A little over three hours later, my alarm went off at 4:30am and I was up and working on the bike again. Eventually after wrestling with various derailleur adjustments and re-tensioning the shifter cable, I was able to gain access to my climbing gears at the cost of the high-end gears - a trade-off that capped my max pedalling speed at around 25km/h. Given the terrain I was happy to make the trade-off, and so gathered my stuff and hit the road.

Total distance for the day: 165km (Strava)