YES tour day 31, 1080 miles

Miles Biked: 70
total miles for trip: 1080+
Elevation gained: 4500ft
Gallons of milk: 1
flat tires: 0!!!!



Our last day of bicycling for the YES Tour. We were all pretty excited, but not at 5 am. We needed to get an early start to try to make it to Telluride before the registration closed and also to try to beat some of the heat and wind. We ate and packed up quickly and were on the road by 6. We were able to ride quite a bit on an urban trail before we had to cut back to the busy main road. Unfortunately the heat and wind were against us before we got to Ridgeway. Once again we were able to ride for a while on a paved trail which was a very nice break from the shoulder of the road. We passed 1000 miles on Sam's odometer right before town and did a little dance of celebration. In reality we had passed this milestone 30 or more miles earlier because for some reason it didn't register in the rain.

In Ridgeway we stopped for lunch at a grocery store. A gallon of milk and chocolate syrup revived Sam along with some sandwiches and fruit. Then we headed West out of town and up towards Dallas Divide. Somehow the wind turned to be mostly against us again. This was becoming a frustrating theme. There was a lot of construction on this road. For the first bit we rode on the left shoulder which was quite nice because the construction was in the left lane and the traffic was in the right lane. Later we had to be on the right shoulder with traffic going past far too close to us. Finally we got to the summit of Dallas Divide at 8970 feet, 3000 feet higher than Montrose. On the other side of the summit the headwind was a lot stronger, and with our downhill speed the apparent headwind was really strong.

We stopped to think about taking the Last Dollar Road but decided that heading downhill on a dirt road would be too dangerous with the slicks. The descent to Placerville was long and would have been very fast without the headwind. As it was, we still went quickly dropping 1700 feet of elevation. We refilled our water bottles and headed up the road to Telluride. Somehow this last push seemed worse than most as we slowly ground our way up the final hill on a tiny shoulder with traffic zipping by right next to us. We might have had a tiny tailwind here, but that just seemed to make things hotter as we cooked in the sun. The final elevation gain was only 1500 feet or so, but it seemed much harder than some of the bigger passes we had done. Eventually we crested the final hill and the final miles to the condo we were staying at. This was the final biking leg and brought us over 1080 miles total. It was wonderful to get off of the bikes, but we couldn't rest yet. We took off the panniers and then headed over to take the wind powered gondola to Mountain Village for an opening reception (dinner for us) of the Telluride Yoga Festival.

This completes the bicycling portion of the Yogaslackers Colorado Y.E.S Tour, at some point we will put together a post with a complete summary.



YES Tour day 31 at SpotAdventures

Map created by SpotAdventures:GPS Geotagging