Thursday, July 2, 2009

Day 4: Del Norte to Platoro

Day 4: Del Norte to Platoro over Indiana Pass and Stunner Pass
49 miles
Friday, 7/10/09



Me in my glory, consulting the Map

This was the BIG day—Indiana Pass. Our ride maps showed that the day was to start with a paved 11-mile climb of about 1000 feet out of Del Norte (rhymes with 'gel snort'). The road then turns to dirt, and the grade steepens significantly—an additional 3000 ft climb over the next 12 miles. This is the highest pass on the entire Canada - Mexico Great Divide route. We all had been anticipating this day with a mixture of excitement and dread.

Moreover, once we hit the 11,910 foot summit we still had an additional 26 miles to ride to our destination of Platoro, a small town that caters to hunters and fishers. Platoro is super-isolated, and sits at 10,000 feet. While our final 26 miles were predominantly downhill, there were 3 separate uphill sections after the summit, including one other named pass (great name—Stunner Pass.)

We arose early and started this ride much earlier than all other days...we were riding before 7:30 am. The weather was again close to ideal…perhaps a bit warm at times, but a bright clear day for our big climb. The first 11 miles were relatively easy, with a gentle uphill grade on a scenic and low-traffic paved road.

As soon as the road turned to dirt, it steepened considerably. (Incidentally, we did not see pavement again until 23 miles into our ride the next day, so we had a continuous dirt stretch for 61 miles over two days.) The next twelve miles lived up to the difficulty we had been expecting. There were steep sections followed by less steep sections, but almost no breaks. We slowly made progress, but the miles were hard fought. We had lunch at the intersection with Blowout Pass (another awesome name) 5 miles from the top.


Climbing up Indiana Pass

As we climbed the trees started to thin out marking our approach to tree-line. The final half mile or so was a real treat. The hill finally let up a bit, and we had a long sweeping level stretch, with a big meadow at hand and lofty peaks all around. It felt like a victory ride, and the high alpine scenery was spectacular. Sadly Indiana Pass has no photo-op sign at the summit, but it was thrilling to have conquered the nasty climb we had feared.


Sweeping conclusion to climb up Indiana

We hit the summit at 2:30, tired but filled with a sense of accomplishment. While we hit very little traffic all day, wouldn’t you know that sharing the summit with us was a scad of ATVers who were growling up and down the road. I believe there were 12 or so in total, and they played cat and mouse with us over the next 5 miles, treating us to their noise, dust, and exhaust fumes every time they passed. Such a pleasure!

As mentioned before, we still had 26 non-trivial miles to ride, so we had to point our bikes south and keep riding. The terrain between the summit and Platoro is fascinating. First up, after a short-seeming 5-mile downhill, we hit an amazing blight. Summitville is a mining operation that was shut down in the 1990’s, and now is one of the EPA ‘Superfund’ sites. They have demolished the landscape around the mine (little wonder, using the friendly sounding ‘open-pit heap leach pad’ method of mining), and the water is contaminated for miles all around the site.


Summitville--Superfund 'scenery'

The area around ‘ground zero’ is sad to behold…the mountain they were mining bears the wounds of their work. Almost all of the damage was caused by one owner who mined from 1986 to 1991 before they were shut down. They were looking for gold, and left behind this disaster. If you are curious, you can click this sobering link to learn more about the Summitville Mine. If you look at the 2nd picture on this site, we rode up the dirt road on the bottom of the picture. The maps warned that we should not drink water anywhere close to the mine site, and as that picture shows, the water was not particularly tempting near the mine!

Our first of the three additional climbs started right at Summitville, and we had to climb (sometimes steeply) for about 2 miles. Mom took a spill on a patch of very soft gravel around the mine site, and has impressive bruising on her arm. (This on top of a tough day for her…much like me on Day 1, she just didn’t have much oomph in her legs, so this difficult day was even more difficult for her.) I am very proud of my Mom’s unrelenting positive attitude. She walked much more this day than any other (at a pace not much slower than my plodding riding pace) but persevered and refused to sag!


Mom shows no signs of having a tough day!

As promised on the maps, the terrain just beyond Summitville was magnificent, in stark contrast to the gross Superfund site. The next 10-15 miles had an extremely remote feel, and our little dirt road treated us to tremendous vistas, forests, and streams. We cursed at the ‘little’ uphill that was more taxing and lengthy than we had been expecting. We then finally had a major downhill section, zooming past the majestic Lookout Mountain. This mountain has not been mined, but it has striking metallic colors that are naturally occurring in its soil. We passed a stream that was equally contaminated as the streams around Summitville, but in this case due to nature rather than man. We could smell the water (sulfur, metallic odor) as we rode over it.


Lookout Mountain, resplendent in earth tones

After a long hand-numbing downhill we hit the ghost town of Stunner, CO. There were some interesting interpretive signs but little remnants of the town. There were lots of hopeful mines started in the area, but evidently the majority failed to yield much of anything profitable.

We then faced our final climb of this long day…Stunner Pass, with a considerable and steady grade for four miles. While this normally would not be too challenging, it was a big grunt at the end of our big day. It started to rain just as I hit the summit, and within minutes we were subject to a drenching downpour. Fortunately for us Sagman and Sagdog were at the top, so we quickly made the wise decision to forgo the final 4-mile downhill into Platoro. We felt that it wasn’t cheating too much, since we had completed all the climbing of the day.

Our cabin in Platoro left a bit to be desired (décor and bedding from the 1960s I think) but the single place to eat there was a hoot, and served up our best meal of the trip. More on that in tomorrow’s report. While I have enjoyed many other days on this ride through Colorado, there is no question that this one stands out.

******

Click here to open Day 4 album in a new window
Reminder...click on the slideshow option to see the large pics. You can hit the pause button if you want to soak in my witticismic captions.


******


Click on 'View Elevation' button for full size interactive map

No comments:

Post a Comment