When we last left our intrepid adventurers, they had all spent their last night in a beautiful mountainside cabin. Woke up to coffee at the cabin, dropped down to the village for breakfast at Telluride Coffee Company (the french toast was fantastic) and more coffee before rallying the troops to start this crazy journey.

The “standard route” for the day was a mere 13 miles with a leg and lung busting climb up to Last Dollar Hut. The group being all gung-ho opted for the additional miles by taking the gondola up the mountain and riding fifteen miles of singletrack beforehand. Sounds like a brilliant plan, right?

I realized on the way to the gondola that I had forgotten my gloves back in the van in Moab. If this had been a day ride, I would have just sucked it up and ridden without them. Being seven days long I thought it would be wise to have gloves. Carl also discovered a leak in his hydration bladder so we both hit up the bike shop right at the base of the gondola.

My prior experiences with bikepacking held true on this day too. No matter how well you think things are setup on your bike there is always some tweaking to do as soon as you hit the trail. Not even ten minutes into the ride a few of us were stopping to tightne straps, adjust bags and other things. Today would start a very frustrating day of a droopy saddlebag for me. Being a short guy, I have very little wiggle room between my rear tire and a seat mounted bag system. Being the genius that I am I opted to not bring my handlebar setup and opted for the small bar bag instead, I could had switched things around if had. Whoops.

We spent the first few miles passing or being passed by groups of people out for day rides. Many of them were quite stunned when we told them we were biking to Moab, UT from Telluride, CO.

The Telluride trails were pretty sweet. I would love to get back there and ride them unencumbered and on my full suspension bike. There was a ridiculous amount of trail to explore! The highlight had to be the final singletrack drop down the sunshine trail after crossing highway 145. Ripping that sucker with bikepacking gear was just an added challenge.

From the bottom of Sunshine we dropped down a gravel road before jumping again onto some singletrack along a stream. Most of the group stopped here to dunk items into the frigid waters. Prosser looked like he was going to strip all the way down to his birthday suit for a moment.

We spent a few miles rolling along this flat singletrack before popping back out to the highway for a few moments. From there it was onto a forest road and the brutal climb up to Last Dollar Hut.

I won’t lie, I suffered on this climb. As I mentioned in the last post, any time I go above 9,000 feet in elevation it is like the engine just shuts down. The legs move but there ain’t no power (queue the Scotty from Stark Trek lines).

The massive upside to such a brutal climb (topped out just shy of 11,000′) up to the hut was the views upon arrival. Looking back towards where we had started the day put into perspective the beauty of the area.

We watched a rainstorm back towards the mountains. The wind picked up for us, there was a little thunder and only a few brief rain drops here and there.
Everyone was a bit cooked from this day. We knew it was going to be hard and it didn’t disappoint in that regard. The views totally made it worth it.

I don’t even remember what I ate this night. I do recall a sprite and some canned pears while waiting for Dean and Johnny B to arrive. Plus, lots of water and just lying in my bed totally shot. Other than that, it’s all kind of a blur.

We all made it, no major injuries to report. I think Prosser whacked a tree coming down Sunshine but otherwise all was well.

Thanks for reading,
-Pete