From Brush Mountain Lodge the Tour Divide goes over the roughest roads that I would encounter in Colorado. Several hours of pushbiking and a long and notably rough descent led to Steamboat Springs, where I spent time in a bike shop trying to get my dropper post sorted out. It had started to go bad back in Wyoming and I was riding with it disconnected and sticking out much further than the manufacturer recommends. It seemed to work but the shop was able to put it back together and I loaded up with food, cash and THC gummies and headed out into the evening. Before I made it out of town, I had my worst crash of the trip when a dude bro came around a corner on the bike path through and knocked me off the trail. The bike and I were unscathed, but this was the closest I came to injury on the whole trip.
I spent the night out of Steamboat in a kind stranger's yard and headed out in the early morning light of a beautiful Colorado day. A few miles down the road, my chain started falling off the front ring every time I shifted into my lowest gear. I spent considerable time working on, but after 15 or 20 attempts and putting it back on the front ring, I gave up and stopped using my easiest gear. This made riding considerably more difficult as I rode down to the Colorado River and then some long hot paved climbs up to Kremmling. Riding without that gear made me feel like a singlespeeder- one long slow crank after another up the hills.
After a night in Kremmling and a great Mexican dinner I rode to Breckenridge the next day. In Silverthorne I stopped to get some help from a bike shop and thought the problem was solved but an hour or so later it came back. A last second push to make it to the post office to pick up the other part of the tent was successful and I found myself riding up Boreas Pass the next morning as the sun rose over the crowded alpine metropolis of Breckenridge.
The passes and roads of Colorado are much easier than the other states. Several of the passes were built for railroads and they wind up the hills at a steady grade that is a pleasure to ride uphill. Even though they are way higher in altitude, it makes for great riding and the ability to cover lots of miles in a day. I made it over 100 miles to Salida and rolled down the 10 miles plus of descending into town in the early evening. I called the local bike shop and they stayed open late for me and were able to give me a new chain, a new front ring and basically save the trip, as I am not sure I could have made it through New Mexico without all of my gears.
From Salida it is 140 plus miles to Del Norte via Marshall Pass. I ended up making about half of those miles the next day and camping at a reservoir filled with albatross that seemed really out of place in the high plains of Colorado.
The next day was on to Del Norte and then Indiana Pass- the highest climb on the Tour Divide at 12000 feet. It is over 20 miles long but by midmorning I was at the top and visiting with my four young friends from New Zealand who were riding the Divide. They were much faster than me, and would invariably pass me a few hours into the day as they slept in longer than I did. We would wind up seeing each other and sometimes camping together the rest of the ride, and on 3 occasions they dropped bananas on the road that I was able to salvage.
I spent my last night in Colorado at a lodge near Horca, and was treated to a great campsite and a bath in a clawfoot tub. My new sleeping system with a great pad and mosquito netting was awesome and I would fall asleep at 8:00 aided by a little THC and wake at 3:30 ready to take on the next days ride.
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