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Colorado Bike Trip: Prelude In Durango

July 7, 2006 on 7:17 pm | In Bicycling |

I arrived here in Durango, Colorado last night, to give myself three days to acclimatize to the altitude before the rigor of a 5-day bike trip from nearby Telluride back to Durango, which will involve biking over 100 miles at elevations that reach nearly 12,000 feet.

(Photos of this part of the trip can be viewed here.)

Yesterday was a long travel day with my stepdaughter Sarah (who was travelling to Boulder to visit my sister-in-law). On the long Boston-to-Denver leg, the infant and toddler in front of us had worked in regular shifts, allowing one to rest while the other screamed at earsplitting levels. The culmination of this in-flight extravaganza occured just after we landed, when a young boy vomited in the aisle right next to us. The Denver-to-Durango leg was shorter but violently bumpy, as we dodged thunderstorms. Occasionally a snowy, rocky landscape would be visible through the clouds below, reminding me that there was something nasty to crash into.

Given all that, the experience on emerging from the tiny Durango/La Plata County airport was one of sudden tranquillity. The sky was clearing as the sun set over the La Plata Mountains, squatting peacefully on the skyline. The air smelled of fresh ozone and aromatic desert. It was quiet. There was little visible other than the landscape. My cousin Ryan picked me up in his truck and we went to his house about 10 miles northwest of Durango, where I’ve been staying the last few nights.

This morning, Ryan drove me into town where I picked up my rental car and then (more importantly) my rental mountain bike, a Trek Fuel EX8. The folks at the bicycle store suggested that I start off by riding the Horse Gulch trail system, a beautiful network of singletrack which starts literally 3 blocks from the center of town, running up and over a nearby ridgeline about 1000′ above Durango. I rode the Telegraph Trail, which is one part of this system.

I rode for about 3 hours, not pushing myself too hard yet: every climb was a struggle at about 7000′. The trails were stunningly beautiful and a really fun ride, mostly buff singletrack swooping through scrubby desert and pine up onto ledges cut into steep rocky slopes. The signage was superb; every trail intersection had a little weatherproof map plaque with arrows oriented to one’s actual location, showing which exit from the intersection corresponded to which trail. I’ve never seen anything so helpful on a trail system before. You’d have to be really, really stupid to get lost there (and it’s not a small place).

Returning to the trailhead, I nodded and said hello to a couple of Indians sitting and drinking by a creek near the entrance. I assume they were Utes, since Durango is right next to the Southern Ute Tribal Reservation. As I packed my bike up, they walked down to the parking lot. One of them was curious about the bike and asked what it was like to ride with a full suspension. His far less functional buddy staggered around, glassy-eyed and barely able to walk. The two of them then had a long dialogue in their own language, the only word of which I could understand was “Kansas”.

I went back to Durango and hung out a bit. Durango styles itself as a sort of “mountain bike capital” (there were little cloth banners of fat-tire bikes flying from the lampposts), which brings to mind some comparisons with another obvious contender: Moab, Utah. Here are some contrasts:

• Durango is a more substantial community, and has been a regional hub for over a century. It has a downtown, albeit a small one, with attractive architecture. On the other hand, Moab seems like a tiny backwater that has recently had an overlay of tourism applied. Moab doesn’t feel like it has a distinct center, and the buildings are more makeshift.
• One can get between points in Durango by bicycle without having to get on a highway; in Moab, that’s nearly impossible.
• Durango has mostly singletrack. Moab bike trails are mostly jeep roads.
• Amazing Durango trails are directly accessible from town. In Moab, you have to drive to get to the good stuff.
• Durango trails directly hook into a vast trail system in the surrounding San Juan National Forest containing untold hundreds of miles extending right up to the Colorado Trail hugging the San Juan Mountains ridgeline. Moab trails are more disconnected, separated by tens of miles of paved road.
• Durango has better mountains and forests; Moab has better rock formations and bizarre sandstone scenery.
• You don’t have to watch out for fragile cryptobiotic soil in Durango.

There is a sort of funky bike-cult feel to Durango that is nice. You see lots and lots of people riding funky fat-tire bikes of yesteryear. Ryan told me: “Most people in Durango have three bikes: a mountain bike, a road bike and a town bike. The town bike is what Durango people measure your status by. The coolest town bike is something old, stylish and vintage. It should show that you have great taste, not that you had a lot of money to spend.” Indeed, I did see a lot of amazing old 50s and 60s Schwinns, Raleighs and Gitanes, often done up in off-beat paint jobs.

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