Day 38: no Towns at All

September 25, 2024

Distance: 124km

Climbing: 1651m

Although I felt much better after our rest day I was still lagging behind Andrew for the last two days. I assumed it was just the accumulated need to recover after almost 40 days of activity and that that would be my energy level for the rest of the trip. It turns out however that I was still recovering from whatever had slowed me down on the day we made it to Grants. Today I was back to how I had felt for most of the trip. It’s amazing how quickly you forget what normal feels like. It was so much more pleasant to be able to ride up the steep sections and have it feel like good exertion rather than something to be endured. It’s a good thing as today the climbing today was steep and frequent.

Much of the day was some variation this forest cover.

Filling up our water and taking advantage of the wifi at the USFS Ranger Station/Work Camp.

I hadn’t expected the New Mexico section to have as much forest as it has, but I’m not complaining - it’s been mostly very pleasant. Today especially was entirely forest with no “desert” sections and no towns at all. The forest is very arid, but still forest. One section was through quite a narrow, steep sided canyon/gully thing that was almost lush and cool; we even managed to find some good water to filter.

Elevation profile on the Garmin. Today had a lot of the steep descending followed immediately by steep climbs.

The hill country that created the elevation profile was beautiful but hard to capture in a picture.

Exceptionally few vehicles passed us, maybe five all day, which was great. One pair stopped and offered us water and sandwiches, but we were in good shape and close to our camp for the night so we were able to decline politely. People definitely look out for each other here and are very generous.

After all the climbing was done we had a fast descent to several camping options and we chose to stop just short of Lake Roberts. This gave us a low-cost (free) option but more importantly just enough time to set up camp and make dinner as the sun set.

We have now put ourselves in a nice position to have three shorter than avaerage days: two to get to Hachita, and a 75km day from Hachita to the end where we hope to have the a shuttle pick us up in the early afternoon. From there to El Paso, TX where we’ll have two days to pack up our bikes, clean up, and relax a bit.

Today's ride: 124 km (77 miles)
Total: 4,107 km (2,550 miles)

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