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Day 2: Lizard Head Pass to Bolam Pass

July 11, 2006 on 12:29 pm | In Bicycling, Uncategorized |

This morning it was crystal-clear, with no hint of the previous day’s nasty weather. We could clearly see the dramatic surroundings of our campground: the 14,000+ peaks of El Diente and Mt. Wilson stared across the valley, with the eccentric volcanic plug of Lizard Head itself rising nearby. (Lizard Head, by the way, was considered the hardest climb in Colorado for much of the first part of the 20th century, because it’s made out of crumbly, unreliable garbage rock. Climbing guides of the period advised taking a photo of Lizard Head and turning around to head home. The lizard-head-looking part apparently decayed and fell off some time ago, leaving everyone to wonder what was the idea behind the name.)

After a very hearty breakfast, and futile attempts to dry our wet gear from last night, we packed up our tents and gear and prepared to leave. The hail from last night was still lying on the ground, a reminder of what we might expect at any time from the fickle mountain skies.

We set off down the East Fork Trail which began in a soggy meadow right outside the campground, and smiles began to break out. After a messy, muddy climb up a rise, the trail topped out on a grassy hill and began to descend in a series of sunny open alpine meadows alternating with rocky, rooty alcoves of cool spruce and fir. The East Fork of the Dolores River roared unseen, far below us on our right; further right across the valley was a steep rock wall with forest above and below. The trail swooped up, down, and around, with tricky biker-unfriendly water bars to spice up our ride. I did a graceful, super-low-speed endo after jumping a water bar only to trap my wheel behind a small rock 2 feet beyond it; fortunately I caught the bike before it could start tumbling down towards the river! It was a little object lesson in the ways of my rental bike, which was 1.5″ shorter than my usual machine: the front wheel was closer to my body, and I was going to have to take account of an increased propensity for nose wheelies and endos by sitting further back.

I felt energetic at first but after a lot of East Fork swooping, I did begin to tire and start to walk some of the steeper climbs; the altitude was getting to me again. We arrived at the midpoint of our ride soon after that, a trail intersection in an open glade with a small creek running through it. We were all grinning, because this was the kind of riding and scenery we had come for, and the weather was cooperating.

The remainder of that ride was a steep fire-road climb of some 5 miles. Even though it was a lot steeper than the initial day on the Galloping Goose, the knowledge that it was shorter, my increasing adaptation to the altitude and the fine weather all contributed to making it a pleasant leg of the trip. As we ascended towards Bolam Pass at 11,000 feet, the scenery slowly morphed around us. Open spaces with brilliant wildflowers became more frequent. The air, cool to start with, became cooler. After about 90 minutes or so, we reached the pass and coasted down another 1/2 mile or so to our beautiful campsite beneath the pines. The truck was there, and the rain canopy had been erected just in time as the skies suddenly cut loose with more hail and rain and the temperatures plummeted from the 70s to the 40s. I picked a campsite, and started to set up my tent.

And that was when I discovered that I had left my dry bag full of all my gear back at Lizard Head Pass.

Mortified, I told Rachel and Scott. They weren’t angry, but obviously they weren’t terribly happy either — Lizard Head was a long, long way away by road. Biking back there to get it was out of the question; the dry bag was enormous. I checked every dry bag, but there was no question. I clearly remembered leaving my dry bag at my tent site at last night’s camping spot. Fortunately I had a day pack with a complete change of clothing, down jacket, and fleece hat, so I didn’t have to freeze in my biking clothes, and there was a spare sleeping pad and bag on hand. Worst come to worst, I’d do the rest of the trip with only two sets of clothes.

Scott already had an unpleasant driving errand on his hands: after several reversals of fortune, “Frank 2″ had finally arrived in the Durango area with his baggage (it had been mistakenly put in some sort of broom closet in the Durango airport and then reported as missing) and was being shuttled to the nearby town of Rico, so Scott needed to pick him up first, bring him back to Bolam Pass. He offered that if the weather was still OK at that point, he would go to pick up my bag at Lizard Head. I don’t think I need to say that I was unbelievably grateful to him for rescuing me after my total bozo forgetfulness.

“Frank 2″ arrived, and turned out to be a young emergency room doctor from Vancouver. (For the rest of the ride, people enjoyed pestering him with questions beginning with, “You know on ER when…”) We didn’t ride for the rest of the day due to bad weather; in some of the non-rainy periods we went down to the nearby lake and washed the mud of the previous day and a half out of our sorry-ass drive trains, which perked up and decided they might shift properly again someday.

While Scott was off retrieving my gear, a man and two boys came through our campsite with a train of 3 llamas and an Airedale. He allowed as how he’d rented the llamas. Each llama was carrying the volume of, say, 3 enormous backpacks. They were traveling to Durango via the Colorado Trail. The kids, carrying little or nothing, looked cranky and exhausted. The llamas looked like they were having a Sunday walk in the park. They all walked down to the lake to camp there.

That night there was a piercingly loud animal fight somewhere nearby. I was convinced that it was a death battle between a pack of coyotes and the Airedale. I could clearly hear a “woof” sound in counterpoint to the weird squealing and yelping of coyotes. This went on for almost 30 minutes. It took me a long time to get to sleep afterwards.

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