Dream Ride: Bikepacking the Colorado Trail

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Having grown up in Colorado, I have a soft spot for my home state, and after much dreaming and scheming over beers with a good friend, my dream trip took shape last August: bikepacking the Colorado Trail.

The Colorado Trail stretches for nearly 500 miles from Denver to Durango, crisscrossing the Continental Divide. Elevation ranges from a low of 5,000 feet to a breathless high point of more than 13,200 feet in southwestern Colorado.  The ride (and hike-a-bike) consists of 300+ miles of singletrack and around 200 miles of double track and gravel roads that skirt wilderness areas where bikes are not allowed.    

We flew into Durango and had two weeks to work our way north and east across Colorado.  An old adage of lightweight backpacking and bikepacking is, “pack light and freeze at night.” To avoid the freezing part while still going light, we spent many hours debating gear choices. It’s a fine line to bring enough gear to deal with regular afternoon thundershowers, the chance of sub-freezing nights and hot days at lower elevations while not overpacking. So we chose to share a stove, skip a tent in favor of bivy sacks and leaving those extra clothes behind--which meant spending two weeks in one pair of bike shorts and one jersey. It can be done.  

Despite a few setbacks (what big trip doesn’t have setbacks) that diverted me off the trail for a day or two, the Colorado Trail was everything I dreamed of. Long days of gorgeous, high-alpine singletrack, pedaling until the sun goes down, a memorable night camping near 13,000 feet  where the temperature dipped into the twenties (and we came close freezing at night), hours upon hours of stumbling and pushing heavy bikes over scree, steep climbs and endless rocks that we didn’t have the oxygen or energy to surmount.  And endless stories of food:  Do we have enough? Is the brewpub going to be open when we get there tomorrow? What are we  going to buy for dinner at the gas station? Do I order one breakfast or two? Do we have enough candy to get through the next two days? When will we hit a town with a grocery store?  

With two weeks to ride the trail, we had plenty of time to hang out in mountain towns, sit around the campfire and never, ever start riding until the sun was up.  

All too soon it was late on our last night. We topped out on the last climb (of what amounted to 75,000 feet of climbing over the 500 miles) and with only one energy bar left, we could see the lights of Denver in the distance. The next morning I pulled on my filthy shorts and jersey for the last time and we rolled the final miles reminiscing about our favorite sections (mine: the San Juan’s above Stony Pass) and then the  chatter quickly  turned from all the amazing memories of this trip toward the next big bikepacking trip.

Bikepacking is backpacking on a bike.  Modern bikepacking is defined by going light, using soft bags instead of panniers and racks and most often involves singletrack trails where a lighter, more maneuverable bike is necessary. If you are interested in learning more about bikepacking, go to bikepacking.net .

For information about the Colorado Trail go to ColoradoTrail.org. Closer to home, the John Wayne Trail offers an easy, convenient place to try bikepacking for the first time. For other trails in Washington State that might make a fun overnighter, visit the Evergreen MTB Association .

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