TransAm Trail Report: Lake City to the Alps

I wish I could download my photos from yesterday (I will this weekend). You would see winding dirt roads into the Rockies, crystal clear streams glowing silverblue just on the verge of freezing. Alpine tundra seen here and in the Arctic. The view from the California Pass at 12,800 feet, our highest yet. The road (road…ha!) over to the other side had recently been graded, making it trailbike hell, and we barely got up it, a 12% grade and thick gravel and shale that just slides under your tires. Up one particularly bad slope Spice’s bike overheated (vapor lock, maybe) but I had the throttle pegged following her up about 200 yards behind. I saw that she was losing power but if I stopped then there would be two women to pull out of the middle of the trail…which would not be fun since there was quite a drop on one side. So I kept going chanting Don’t Look! Don’t Look! (You ride toward what you look at.) and made it up to the top, parked the Kawi and waited to see if she’d recovered. Nothing. I saw a few little ATV flags milling about about where she had gotten into trouble, so I walked back down and sure enough, she’d bogged down. Sam had caught up with us and found her in the middle of the trail, but unlike me, he stopped to help, so his bike was in the trail, too, along with four ATVs holding senior citizen couples and their gray moustached Dacshounds bundled in blankets.
Spices clutch lever — despite being protected by solid hand guards — was bent, and it took an allen wrench to fix it, which wasn’t in any of our kits, so we had no choice but to wait there for Chris who had taken a more challenging route with John.
Then we made California Pass, and started down the other side past old mining towns, abandoned and picturesque and in a riot of wildflowers. On this side of the mountain the rivers ran gold with iron ore. We headed up to Cinnamon Pass, another very steep grade but this one with no gravel so made it without trouble, we thought, until Sam arrived without his muffler. Some ATVers picked it up for us and delivered it to the top, where we used zip ties and baling wire to put it back on again. By this time we’d been riding since 9am and it was nearing 5. The light was amazing, amber sunlight shining on the copper mountains, the yellow wildflowers a golden stain in the glacial valleys, pueblos turning from brown to orange.
This was the most beautiful ride at the most beautiful time on the most beautiful road, just challenging enough to improve my skills with switchbacks not too steep and rocky, though enough to give me a thrill. My 16 year old spirit returned and by the end of the day I was flying across them in 3rd until my 46 year old spirit scolded me into shifting down.
Hey Mom and Dad…WHAT WERE YOU THINKING when you let me do this as a teenager? (Well, whatever you were thinking, thank you 🙂
We were passed up by several groups of teenage boys on similar bikes who slipslided along thousands foot drops fishtailing and yahooing without a thought of falling.
Our hotel is run by a French couple so we rested and shared stories over racks of lamb and duck breast and seared ahi tuna and a couple of beautiful bottles of red wine, and slept well.
This morning…more (later)
–Carla