Prologue: "I Wash My Hands of You!"
"But John wasn't interested in hunting, so he refused to go to the hunter safety course. Grandpa told him "I wash my hands of you!". "Tell it again daddy!".
It's Thursday afternoon in early October and we're in a Mazda 3 creeping along the eternally clogged I-70 west of Denver. We had heard the saga of John's refusal to learn how to wear blaze orange and always point the muzzle in a safe direction for the third time. Young NL thought this was the most fascinating story ever told, and ML to his credit told it admirably and patiently. The story is a good parable for our present situation: I had recently "washed my hands" of a situation that was going nowhere slowly and made the leap into far bigger and better opportunities, and now I found myself based in the Eastern time zone for the first time in 15 years. Ironically this return to a location-based lifestyle yielded the time and morale to finally restart my long dormant engine for adventure with ML, last undertaken several lifetimes ago.
In the years since our last epic quest we have experienced: 2 new children (ML), a mortgage (ML), moves to 6 different states(CRS), and 2 new US Presidents (both). Our disgust at our lack of activity grew by the day, until we had to wash our hands of our complacency, lest we allow ourselves to rot away in regret.
Our creeping slog back to Evergreen finally completed, we scarfed down green chile cheeseburgers from Freddy's and plotted our plan of attack.
Packing it all in
Due to various circumstances unknown to us on our previous adventures (familial obligations for ML, a job that had limited (albeit paid) time off for CRS), there was an element of desperation hanging over our plans. We were essentially limited to 36 hours to do as we damned well pleased; we resolved that not a second would go to waste. Like a stoner at Cici's pizza buffet we intended to gorge ourselves until we couldn't take any more.
After much planning, agonizing, mapping, negotiating (ML had questionable knees; I have had a poor track record above 10,000 feet), and endless fantasizing we devised a beautiful plan. We were to immerse ourselves in the most sublime Aspen fall colors Colorado had to offer while simultaneously subjecting our bodies to miseries not experienced in quite some time through ambitious bike touring and backpacking.
ML let me borrow a hardy mountain bike that was state of the art in 1995. Although on the small side, my knees didn't hit the handlebars and the brakes worked, so it passed muster. A quick few test laps around the driveway is no substitute for grinding up endless hills with a comically oversized and overstuffed backpack, but that was for my future self to deal with. We determined we were never going to be more ready, so the only thing left to do was to do it.
Tortoise and the Hare
Our 36 hours of blissful freedom kicked off with tears and tantrums as we tried to leave the house at a reasonable hour, immediately placing us in a pensive mood. However, our spirits were lifted by sightings of pockets of gold in "them thar hills" as we drove through the always enchanting canyons of Colorado.
We parked at some forlorn dirt lot complete with dilapidated bridge designed solely for lowlifes and miscreants to congregate. I had decided to wear my 75 liter backpacking pack on the ride stuffed full of gear, much to the horror of any person even slightly familiar with ergonomics. ML carefully and methodically packed, unpacked, repacked, and depacked over several iterations until his bike was the picture of efficiency and comfort. While he was doing that I was making the best possible use of my time by staring at my watch and pacing, knowing that the bottom of our hourglass of freedom is already getting sandy.
This parking "lot" tableau encapsulated our 12 years of adventures together: the unorganized impatient clock watcher and the methodical perfectionist working in some sort of unexpected harmony. I keep us from being caught in the darkness, but ML always knows exactly where his flashlight is.
With our loads secure, we began our trip in earnest. Almost immediately we were presented with the challenge of a very steep ascent of Douglas Mountain Drive. I used the pent up energy from the parking lot to all but sprint up the hill as if I were in the Tour de France and convinced I had a shot at the yellow jersey. I pumped, grinded, sweated, and cursed my way up the hill to the gates of Centennial Cone Park. Needless to say I was quite proud of my exploits, but I would soon grow to realize I had made a grave mistake.
Bikepacking Part 1: Centennial Cone and the Dastardly Robinson Hill Road
Centennial cone is an exceptionally popular mountain biking destination, containing trails for all ability levels. We took the Elk Range trail through the middle of the park over gently rolling terrain and relatively smooth trails. My previous efforts at mountain biking consistently led to damaged equipment and morale, so the equivalent of a bunny slope seemed just fine for me. The fact that I was without health insurance at the time did not inspire any risk taking on my part.
At one juncture we met an overweight surly man riding solo who gave us the most disapproving glare he could conjure. Our overstuffed packs were definitely unusual in these parts, and he clearly saw us as dangerous interlopers into what he undoubtedly considered "his" park. For all he knew we were full-on vagrants hell bent on organizing a drug-fueled rave destined to end in a catastrophic brush fire.
After some pleasant riding we arrived at the parking area at the other end of the park, which was very attractive and well kept. While shoving piles of various carb-heavy bars down our throats our old chum arrived at the trailhead. He glared at us some more and asked us how many nights we planned to stay out. I told him we are heading up to Golden Gate Canyon for the night, and he replied "Well I hope it doesn't rain too much on you guys tonight" in a tone of voice that indicated nothing in the world would give him more delight than to learn we were thoroughly soaked and miserable.
Thankful to leave that old bastard behind us we immediately faced a deceptively steep climb out of Centennial Cone to Robinson Hill Road. Once again I pumped and grinded, slowly rolling past a couple out walking their dogs and commenting on our outrageously overloaded bikes. Yes, it was as unpleasant as it looked. Soon enough we were on a very pleasant bucolic country road, the sort of road that makes you want to drop everything and live the quiet humble life in rural Colorado. Much to our delight dogs were either absent or properly restrained, as they tend to be a common hazard on otherwise lovely rural roads.
Soon we came to a fork in the road that featured a decaying building called the Douglas Mountain Ranch, which looked very enticing. Also nearby was a house sublimely decorated for Halloween, complete with several skeletons out in the yard. We soon discovered that those skeletons were actually the last fools who tried to do this ride fully-loaded.
The fun and games quickly ended as the pavement turned to dirt and the real climbing began in earnest. Almost immediately I had to take several breaks lest my legs explode. The road was brutally steep, and was soft enough to really sap your mechanical advantage. I hadn't experienced riding like this since the infamous Shasta Circle Jerk, something I wasn't keen on repeating. Being a dedicated mountain biker ML navigated this unholy stretch of Robinson Hill Road with more grace than I, but it was certainly no picnic for him either.
Eventually the dirt gave way to pavement, but the elevation gain kept on at a relentless pace. While we were busy trying to keep our lungs from collapsing we noticed that we were progressively entering gold country, with beautiful aspens aplenty. This glimpse of what was to come gave us the slight morale boost necessary to complete this endless climb.
Another morale boost came from an unlikely source. In the middle of nowhere on this third-rate country road someone had erected a small library, the likes of which you may see in gentrified neighborhoods in cities. Never one to pass up a smoking deal, ML grabbed himself a copy of some works of French diarist and Henry Miller advocate Annias Nin, which rendered the whole situation even more absurd. When you are packing 5 or 6 bags worth of multisport gear, why not add another pound of paper that you will certainly never read?
If Robinson Hill Road was unpleasant enough, it was mere training for Smith Hill Road. The good news was that we were now one step closer to the screaming descent down Golden Gate Canyon Road to our destination for the evening (at least as our poor overloaded bikes were concerned). The bad news was that Smith Hill road was every bit as steep as the early stretches of Robinson Hill road, with the added pleasure of being even sandier. My quads could take no more punishment, and I spent significant time on this stretch performing the humiliating bike tour walk/push of shame on the steepest parts. As a consolation the views and foliage were becoming increasingly more brilliant, so all our struggles were not in vain.
At long last we reached Golden Gate Canyon Road. From here it was a fast descent down into the park. We immediately realized the main problem here: As enjoyable as this stretch would be, we will have to backtrack up this steep hill tomorrow. The shoulders were non-existent and the traffic fast. Plus, tomorrow being Saturday the leaf peepers from Denver would be out in full force. Even at this moment of triumph we were filled with dread.
But that would be for our future selves to deal with. For the time being we were grateful to be on smooth pavement with a coast down to the park, where we would finally ditch our bikes and commence with the backpacking portion of the adventure.
"What am I supposed to do here?" - Backpacking Golden Gate Canyon State Park
Glad to give our sore asses a break from our bike saddles, we decided to get some info and take advantage of the restrooms at the visitor center closing in 15 minutes. Our chief concern was water availability at our reserved campsite in the Greenfield Meadow campground. I stood patiently in line while the visitor center staff dealt with the influx of folks venturing from who knows where to snap a few pictures of yellow leaves. The woman directly in front of me was likely 60 and seemed like the sort that read about the park in the local newspaper in the "Weekender" section. She walked up to the desk and asked the young fellow with clearly frayed nerves "OK, so what am I supposed to do here?". The look on his face said many things: That was the 76th stupid question of the day and I can't wait to get out of here in 15 minutes; I went $35,000 in debt for an Enviornmental Science degree and this is what I'm reduced to; I despise these Aspens and the morons they attract. With the poise that can only be gained through several weeks of holding one's tongue, the young ranger responded with a courteous but blunt: "Just find a place to park. That's all you need to worry about now." She was unsatisfied with the answer, but seemed to realize further interrogation may lead to an ugly scene. When it became my turn I quickly asked about the status of the spring at the campground, and he stated that we had better pack as much water as possible as it had almost dried up. I thanked him and left, well aware that there is no chance he knew what he was talking about.
ML and I performed our ritual of staring at watches and pacing vs. methodically packing, unpacking, depacking, and repacking as we transitioned into the backpacking portion of the exercise. The short October days meant our daylight was limited, making the watch staring ever more intense. Eventually we got on the Black Bear trail to make our ascent up to the campground. By this point my quads were howling in misery and I had developed a fine chafe to boot, making this easy little trek far more challenging that it appeared on paper. Nevertheless we persevered and reached our campsite right at sunset, if not a bit later. The views on the way up made us excited for the following day's exploration.
One of the chief benefits of being past 40 years of age is that time becomes more valuable and you tend not to waste it as much as you did when you were younger. ML and I both detest cleaning dishes in camp, so we elected to go full-on freeze dried meals for the first time. We could not believe we had not been doing this earlier. My Mountain House Asian Chicken and Rice pouch was rather nondescript, but definitely edible. ML's Chili Mac was far superior. Unfortunately fires are not allowed in these backcountry sites, which saddened me greatly but relieved me of carrying my boy scout-approved hatchet and other fire starting materiels. We turned in quickly into ML's legendary Eureka Spitfire tent that once had its very own website in its honor.
We were pleasantly surprised to discover that the adjacent campsites were unoccupied on a Friday night in peak season. Despite this auspicious sign, ML stated "Be prepared to have some company tomorrow morning. This place will be incredibly busy"...
The first group of leaf peeping city slickers walked by our tent around 6:45am, dawn barely breaking. They clearly embraced Colorado's early to bed, early to rise culture developed through the avoidance of perpetual afternoon thunderstorms. Following this vanguard was a steady stream of hikers that relentlessly trod all around us. Realizing that laying in peaceful slumber was futile, I walked to the spring that the ranger cautioned me was on the verge of drying up. I was happy to see he was completely wrong and it was flowing freely through the pipe, leading me to speculate neither he nor anyone working at the front desk had ventured beyond the parking lot in months.
Finding the crowds increasingly annoying we decided to have our breakfast on a rock outcrop about 50 yards beyond our tent. More freeze dried delicacies. I was a bit perturbed that my egg skillet breakfast tasted exactly like my Asian chicken dinner the night prior. While the quality of food left a little to be desired (the tiny bottles of Tabasco that come with MREs would have saved the day), cleanup took exactly 0 seconds, leaving more time to savor the views.
We were packing camp when a large group of daytrippers ominously walked up to our site. One of them commented "Let's take a break at this campsite" and proceeded to "take a load off" just a few feet where we were obviously still occupying our site. It was an egregious breach of etiquette, as if a group of loud morons walked into your house while you were reading a book and had a noisy conversation at your dinner table. As bad as that was, to really grind our gears a woman with an unbelievably grating rising inflection explained in gratuitous detail her child's (or maybe her dog's?) nut allergies. I was about to vomit myself. Despite the fact the whole situation was repulsive, several more groups of greenhorns decided to take a break right next to us, probably because they saw everyone congregated around us and figured that's where you are "supposed" to take a break. At that moment Edward Abbey once again seemed like a genius holy figure. With that in our minds we joined the conga line to see what all the fuss was about.
The loop around Frazier Meadow was truly quite sublime, the apens quite glorious. It really was the ideal time to be at Golden Gate Canyon, and although you were never out of sight of other human beings it was worth the grueling punishment the day before. We checked out other campsites for future reference (verdict: ours was fine, but there are others that would be much more off the beaten path), including one that someone had taken the time to write "Love Ass" with sticks in the middle of the tent pad. We were unsure if that was a positive or negative sign.
Alas, the clock was still ticking on our 36 hours of freedom and the day wasn't getting any longer. We hiked back down to the visitor's center, now a scene of chaos and bedlam. Some poor sap had the unenviable job of parking lot attendant, telling each and every car that rolled in they could only park there for 10 minutes, they had to pay a fee at the box on the porch, and if they were going hiking they had to park in some other lot. He looked exhausted and exasperated, and it was still midday on Saturday. Hopefully he was being fairly compensated in one way or another.
I had a long opportunity to observe him at his pitiable task as ML was packing, unpacking, depacking, repacking in an attempt to get back to his initial bike touring gear setup. He was reviewing pictures to relearn how he bungeed everything together when we noticed there was a large festering pile of dog shit right next to our bikes. This proved to be quite a distraction, making the packing even more of a chore. When all this was going on a group of stoked bros are carbon fiber road bikes pulled in. I chatted with the ring leader, who looked like pro wrestler Matt Riddle wearing sunglasses that would have made 1987 Jose Canseco jealous. I told them about our mission, and they were rather impressed we were foolish enough to go up Robinson Hill Rd, especially with our primitive bikes and multi sport gear dangling off the sides. Knowing full well we had a steep climb immediately ahead, we reluctantly shoved off, wishing we had expensive road bikes with no gear. And cool sunglasses.
Bikepacking Park 2: The Ups and Downs of the Road
The climb was not as awful as we had anticipated, a case of exaggerated negative expectations leading to a relatively positive experience. The ascent was steady but never too steep, just the way you want it. With relentless spinning we made it to the summit, glad that the first ascent of the day was already behind us. What lay ahead was one of the best descents I ever had in my life as it seemed to go on for miles on end. Perhaps only the day of riding during the Salton Sea Siege where we rarely pedaled over the course of 20 miles was better (and I don't expect to experience riding anywhere near that blissful again). The heavy traffic was a distraction, and my puny sunglasses not worthy of a 40-40 man were admitting too many road particles into my eyes, but it was exhilarating to be riding through such beautiful country on a loaded bike at such speeds. Moments like those are what make the grueling slogs and gear frustration all worth it.
Alas, all good things must end, and our descent ended with a turnoff back on our old arch-nemesis, Robinson Hill Road. We had a steep, twisting ascent back to where we initially got on it post Centennial Cone. This ascent was relatively short and very picturesque, so it was not too bad all things considered. We did pass a shipping container in the woods on the way up that was completely out of place. If we weren't on a set schedule we would have set aside a few hours to bust into that thing to see what it could possibly contain.
Ascent achieved, we were back on the pastoral roads by the skeleton house and on to Douglas Mountain Road where this adventure began. More bucolic beauty and good, traffic-free riding followed. This road also involved a fierce descent, but the sharp curves and dodgy pavement meant I was squeezing the brakes most of the time, nearly running over a snake at one point. The views here were also outstanding, but my focus was on the road immediately in front of my front tire lest I hit a pothole and go "ass over tincup" at 30 mph.
Eventually we reached the entrance to Centennial Cone once again where we were met by a curious cat, and we had to decide our fate. Should we cruise back down to the car and call it good (taking less than a minute over known territory) or venture out through a dirt road of unknown quality and then along a river back to the car? Knowing the day was long and the sands of freedom were running low, we had no choice but to take the more adventurous option.
Grinding Along Rocks and Rivers
The road back to the Centennial Cone trailhead was shockingly endless and grueling. We had no recollection of it being as challenging as it was, but we were different people than we were 28 hours earlier. Surprisingly tired by the time we reached the trailhead, we were happy to see that the parking lot was completely empty save for one vehicle. Instead of a bro full of stoke after a ride, it was a little old lady who asked us if we were camping out here. She told us that it would be a foolish thing to do as she lives nearby and can show us photos of all kinds of critters that lurk out in the hills after dark. We thanked her for the advice and reassured her our mission was almost complete. We were quite impressed by the cranky senior citizens who want to keep us dirtbags out of their sanctuary, lest we become more critters stalking the hills after dark ourselves.
Our descent back to Highway 6 was via the Travois, Juniper, and disconcertingly named Mayhem Gulch trails. These turned out to be formidable routes of travel for bikes with dozens of pounds of gear strapped to them and piloted by riders not accustomed to mountain biking at the end of a day and a half of nonstop action. Much to my shock and relief I made it all the way down without a single incident. It was nothing but jumbled rocks, steep terrain, and a very steep unforgiving dropoff if you get cocky. To a seasoned MTB rider on a modern bike with no extra gear it would likely be a bit of a bore but I was holding on for dear life. I was squeezing the brakes so tightly the entire way my forearms were throbbing and cramping. I was extremely happy to be back on pavement.
The final few miles back to the car were along the Peaks to Plains paved trail adjacent to Clear Creek. It was a perfect way to end the adventure, a leisurely cruise along a gorgeous canyon at sunset. We arrived back at ML's car, pleased to see that would be thieves believed the "Nothing of value in here" sign wisely placed on the dash. For once ML was waiting for me as he hastily chucked everything in the trunk, glad to be done with the packing, unpacking, depacking, etc.
Of course the important matter at this point was finding some grub. This was much more stressful than anticipated, due to a combination of FOMO, irritating health and safety restrictions, and the odd habit of Evergreen area restaurants closing early on Saturdays (like everyone else in CO they want to get up at 4am to be back at the trailhead by noon). We settled on takeout from Saigon Landing downtown. We returned to ML's quiet country estate and chowed down on his deck, listening to the Elk bugling nearby and reliving all the good times of the past couple days of action and adventure. It really was as good as it gets.
Epilogue: A Template for the Future
The next day was back to the world of responsibility, but we made the most of it with walks to old rusty cars in the woods and a very aggressive game of backyard frisbee golf. A lost disc soured the mood (why did they color the driver black and not dayglo orange?), but we had pizza and watched Tom Brady defeat his former team in a close, well-fought game that left everyone satisfied. We resolved that it is better to have short, dense, and somewhat rushed adventures that we manage to squeeze in vs long, epic adventures that never happen. It would be worthwhile to inventory the gear and practice unpacking, depacking, and repacking because I have a hunch we have many more multisport overnighters in our (hopefully near) future.
