Morning came and the fire got going straight away. The day was clearer with new peaks visible over the lake. I planned on leaving early and so got packing. I was keen to get to La Junta, a small crossroads town just under 100km away where I had thought of maybe cutting west to the coast again. The Aussies were taking a more relaxed pace and were building their fishing rods as I loaded up the bike.
As I was packing so I noticed a kink in one of my gear cables just below the handlebars. Bare, unwound strands were poking out of a barrel connector. Having to replace a gear cable already was not a good start for a brand new bike, nor an inexperienced mechanic. I released the tension on the rear derailleur and prepared for a lengthy process. I will remember this as a lesson in slowing down before the solution becomes worse than the cause. I’d panicked, it wasn’t the gear cable, it was the protective sheath that had slipped out. A design or manufacturing fault for sure but one with little consequence, I taped up the connector and would have to make do without the small adjustments it provides. However, it took me another half an hour just to get the correct gear positioning back to what it was and I left the cable in a worse state than it was before. Plus my messing with it had possibly affected the gear shifting, something I wouldn’t find out until down the road. Not ideal for the start of a long day.
I got going eventually, back riding solo and, for the first time, with full sun beaming down. For 10km I cruised along the edge of the lake on a meandering road, looking up at the hills on either side and the snow that capped the higher ones. I’d checked the route before and seen a big climb was ahead but I had a suspicion that maps had got it wrong as I’d been going for so long already, it wasn’t.
Over the next hour I gained 600m in altitude with a couple of switch-backs and one short section I had to dismount and climb with a calf-burning push. Trucks barged past noisily through the canyon and soon there was patches of snow on the side of the road. I was so glad for the sun and the cold mountain air, it was the perfect climate for the long ascent. Eventually I reached a crest in the road at a crawl, a radio antenna towering above and a road sign indicating downhill. I took a breather, checked my phone with the first signal I’d had in two days, put my jacket on and started the epic descent on the backside of the pass.
Down in the valley I was still just over one-quarter of the way to La Junta. The rest of the route was along the banks of a winding river in the corridor between two mountain ridges. At the top nearer the pass was a wash where flash floods and snow melt prevented any growth, but deeper into the valley was thick with trees and expansive farmland. Wooden cabins and green fields of cattle completed the alpine feel of the route. Waterfalls were everywhere along the valley walls, the road clung to the cliffs on the eastern side and bridged the streams leading from the falls down into the river. The road crossed the valley and I stopped for lunch with a view over a field and a distant peak through a break in the valley wall. I pulled out my tent and hung it on the fence to let the morning’s dew evaporate.
Towards the very end of the valley as I approached the descent into La Junta the road hung above the forest and gave a view over the dense canopy, lit yellow by the lowering sun that gave a hazy depth to the layers of mountains in the west. I entered the small town at dusk and stopped at the first place I could find for a hot shower and a comfy bed.
Austral Spring 