Day 1: Telluride to Last Dollar Hut
Some of us have been up since 4am, trying to be quiet (mostly just the older guys). Getting ready took longer than we expected, but we finally left the cabin at 8am. Boxes were left for the concierge to mail to Moab for us. It’s a beautiful day, we hit what may be our top speed of the trip going down the paved highway hill (40mph). We stop at the service station to fill our tires – knowing we are not doing anything technical, and we are in for a lot of climbing, everyone fills to 60lbs. Derailleur problems keep us at the filling station for another 30 minutes, but we finally begin our ascent – having over 3,000 ft ahead of us for the day.
Ray broke his chain as soon as we hit the dirt road (after about 1,000 ft of climbing). That was the 2nd chain he broke in two days (he broke one the day before I arrived), so we called the bike shop and asked them to bring another chain to us, since we were not that far from town. They came out, checked the repair we did, gave us another chain, and wished us “Buono Viagio”.. OK! Whew!! Now we can get started. Wrong! Two hundred feet more, and Ray broke another chain. The guys in the van couldn’t have even been back to the blacktop yet. This time we called the shop and asked them to bring an entire bike instead of just a chain. About an hour later, they came back out with a new bike, and repair stand. They got Ray all fixed up, and we were ready to start again. It was a rough start, but I give the bike shop a lot of credit for sticking with us and being as prompt as possible to help us get on our way.
Finally on our way again, we got to see our first wild life – a couple of mule deer. The road started to get very interesting. We are now seeing lots of Aspen trees (something we will come to love more and more as the trip goes on) lining the dirt road. We also come to a hill side that looks like the mountain exploded into a million small rocks – hard to explain – see pictures. Finally we get to one of the first awesome views of the mountains where we get one of our many “timer photos” (while Paul gets a shot of me setting up the timer photo).
After another hour of climbing and starting to really feel the altitude (about 10,000 feet now), we come to small mountain stream. We try our water purifier and it WORKS…for a while… oh well, there will be more water at the hut. What looks like a short hill going away from this stream crossing turns out to be the most monstrous hill of the entire ride (until we get to Gateway). This climb seems to never end, it is on VERY loose dirt and rocks, and has absolutely zero recovery zones. I climb about 2/3 of it with Todd, and I am spent – Todd rocks on. From this point forward I must stop another 4 times, along with Bill to make it to the top. Jim also has to stop several times, but climbs with much more authority than Bill and I. We can not imagine how Ray and Paul are feeling, as they have already been lagging a bit on the less severe climbs. We continue to persevere, and see that Todd continues to amaze us with zero stopping – at almost 11,000 feet, in the middle of the afternoon heat! We see a climbing champ in Todd we have never seen before. Wow.
The final 300 feet must be taken on foot – and it alone is a “bear”. We all finally get to the top, and someone asks me if I have a key. “A key? For what?” I ask. “For the hut.” “You mean it’s locked?” This is a nightmare – how could I have planned this for almost an entire year, spending HOURS upon HOURS pouring over logistics, seemingly having “everything worked out”, and forgot to ask a simple question “How do we get in?” Momentarily, I panic. Jim however, has cell reception, and it is a weekday. I call the Hut office, and our first divine intervention occurs – someone is actually there (I usually get the answering machine). She doesn’t seem surprised that I don’t have the key – informed me that despite the fact that it is not mentioned anywhere in the documentation, there was supposed to be a key in a small 2” envelope in the packet I got. I don’t remember anything like that, but not to worry she says, there is a “hide a key”. She directs me to the location, and we are in! WHEW AGAIN!! We dodge another bullet, and she informs us there should be one at each cabin as we go.
We get in the cabin, and it is MUCH nicer than any of us thought it would be, and more importantly, there is WAY more food than we thought they would have. In fact, we have fresh peppers and onions. We are ecstatic! Ray immediately “takes the helm” in the kitchen, with Bill as “first mate”, and they whip up some pasta with fried peppers and onions. We eat this feast overlooking one of the most awesome views we would see for the next several days. We are so high, we are above jets landing in Telluride.
After dinner Bill leads us in a discussion topic of how he has been transformed by his life in Christ. Everyone participates. Despite the fact that several of us don’t know each other that well, there is tremendous chemistry, no one dominates, no one fades into the background. We have a great bunch of guys here – what a great day!
Stats for the day: 15.5 miles, 6 hr trip, 2:40 pedal time, 2,780 ft of climbing, we end at 11,000 ft, and we rode for a 5.8 mph average (ouch). This by the way is taken from Paul’s computer each day, and he is admittedly the slowest rider (having just started in this sport, with no hill climbing under his belt). The group probably will average 1 to 2 mph better on average.
More pictures for this day can be seen by clicking the button at the top of this page. A sheet of "thumbnails" will be displayed, and you can click on them to see the full size/full picture.
We traveled WEST or Right to Left looking at the map, but the profile below reads left to right.
