This was after I had scraped some off. Turns out the titanium poop trowel makes a good scraper! Usually, I try to avoid the rocks, but the rocks helped fling the mud off the tires, so I bounced my way down descents hitting rock after rock, and avoiding the soft smooth…mud. Oh, and it totally caked in my cleats on my shoes. It made me an inch taller, and very hard to clip into the pedals!
We came to the first of the two climbs. Couldn’t ride it. Had to push.
See that track snaking up the hill? At least there was more rock than dirt, so the wheels (and my shoes) didn’t get too caked up. Bethany said her wheels seemed to attract the mud more than mine. I don’t think it was so much that as it was that mine shed the mud better (with some speed and rocks, the mud was flying off).
We finally got to some less dirt, and were able to ride more. We came upon a gate. I think it was the first one of the day (there were several). The only problem was this one had a padlock on it. After having a fit (okay, not really), we commenced with taking all the bags off the bikes so we could lift them over the barbed wire fence. Bethany was able to lift her’s by herself. It took both of us to lift Billy.
Over the gate, and putting the bags back on. We commented how little did we know we would be unpacking and packing the bikes two extra times (at this time we didn’t know we would get to do it twice more…).
Back to riding, it was pretty good. The weather was drying the ground out, and we weren’t collecting mud at all. We still had one more “climb of note” (that initiates the climb profile on my Garmin). Pretty soon we could see it looming in the distance. Oh, this was going to be a doozy! As we looked at the monstrosity, Bethany said we should take the bikes up one at a time. Me, ever the optimist, said, “Often the hill isn’t as steep as it looks once you get going.” Bethany said, “Oh, it’s steep!” I said I wanted to give it a go, and push Billy up myself.
As you can see, I managed it.
So did Bethany.
We took a little snack break at the top (little indeed, as we didn’t have much food left).
Sitting on a rock.
From there, things got much better. A nice long straight gravel road.
Trending down, no less!
We came to where the road curved, but there was a road continuing straight too. The route said to continue straight onto Broad Canyon. There was a little sign that said, “No access to Hwy 185”. Had I looked ahead more at the route, I would have seen that we were heading to 185. However, I would have just thought it was meant for cars. Surely not bikes. We continued onto Broad Canyon. It got a little rougher, then it got really sandy.
Basically, we were riding in an arroyo. Because it was still trending down, I was able to ride it. Bethany, unfortunately had her front wheel come to a sudden stop…but she didn’t. Fortunately, if you have to go over the handlebars, landing in the sand isn’t too bad.
Before long, my Garmin was saying we were off course. Since we didn’t much care for riding in the sand anyway, we decided to heed its warning, and find the course. We walked in the direction of the purple line on my Garmin. It said “Course found”, but there was no track. Bethany went scouting with her Garmin in hand. She came back to say there was kind of a trail, so we started pushing the bikes on the trail.
Do you see a trail? No? Me neither.
We could see the highway we were supposed to turn onto. We just kept picking our way toward it. Then we came to a barbed wire fence. Not a gate, but a fence. In fact it was a triangle of fences. On the other side of the fences was a plowed field. I climbed over and went around the corner to see, if we lifted our bikes over the fences, could we get out of the field? It looked possible. So, once again, we took all the bags off, threw them to the other side of the first fence, lifted the bikes over, and climbed over. The second one, we were able to lift up the wire and slide the bikes, and ourselves under.
Billy was next to go under.
Once we were in the field, we made our way to the gate. There were actually two gates, one of which was next to the highway. We opted to go to that one. It was locked. For the third time, we took the bags off, lifted the bikes over, and put the bags back on. We were actually getting pretty fast!
Finally, we were on the highway. Next stop, Radium Springs, and some food! There was a little bit of climbing, but it wasn’t too much. The wind, however, was starting to make itself known. We rode about 5 miles to Radium Springs.
I like to call it Radiator Springs (from the Cars movies).
I pulled up to the Blue Moon Bar and Grill and waited for Bethany. Once she arrived, we headed in for some hot food, and a couple gallons of water to drink pronto (we were running low on that too). We both had chicken tenders and fries. They weren’t anything special, but they sure tasted good!
Back on the road, we had a couple miles to go before getting onto the Rio Grande Levy.
Crossing the Rio Grande
Pecan Orchards on both sides of the road (NM grows 20% of the country’s pecans).
Once on the gravel levy, the wind had really picked up. It was sometimes a crosswind and sometimes a ferocious headwind (like you could barely move).
Couldn’t really see the river from the levy.
It was a slow slog. We came to a point where the levy was closed and the route took us back to the highway. That lasted about 3 miles before we were routed back to the levy. Bethany wanted to stay on the highway, but it didn’t look like it would take us where we needed (turns out it would have). She Google mapped the route to our hotel in Las Cruces, and it said to take the levy. So back to the levy we went. Again, the wind was howling, and the gravel on the levy was thick in places, and washboard too. There was a dirt road down below that looked smoother, and maybe out of the wind a bit. I told Bethany we could try it, and see if it was easier. If not, we could just come back up at the next opportunity. It was easier. Not much less windy, but smoother, so we could go a little faster.
We finally reached the end of the levy, and came to a paved path.
It was 2 miles to the end of the route. Bethany wanted out of the wind, so instead of going that way on the trail, we went the other way. It was probably about the same distance, but the wind was behind us for awhile.
We were making our way toward the hotel when we came upon this.
Yeah, we stopped. I got a few items while Bethany watched the bikes. It was a delicious Mexican panaderÃa. So many things to choose from! I got a coconut covered cookie, a blueberry empanada, and another thing that looked good, but I don’t know what it was called. I took a couple of bites of the cookie, then we continued to the hotel.
We arrived at the hotel at 5:15 (we had left this morning at 7:45). We had gone just 41 miles in over 9 hours!
Sara had texted me asking if we wanted to go to dinner when we got back. Of course! She said she’d invite the other SheWolves too. I took a quick shower (Sara was picking me up at 6:15). Bethany, being flat out exhausted, opted to stay at the hotel so she could get working on packing her bike.
Sara and I met Tanya at a cool Mexican restaurant in Masilla (which was the first town, before Las Cruces).
La Posta.
Inside, the restaurant was really cool. There were two large macaw parrots in a giant aviary. There were these big stars (I’ve seen them as piñatas before) hanging from the ceiling, and lots of other artwork. We had a great dinner, which Sara paid for, even though I told her I should be buying their dinner since they have been so helpful and welcoming!
When I told Sara (who had created the route for us that we could do in the time we had) what today had been like (especially the fences), she was shocked. Then she realized that Ride With GPS must have used her most recent route (Broad Canyon), and not the route she intended. That place where the road curved, and we went straight?…we should have turned.
Yes, today was very challenging, but we channeled our mantra of we can do hard things, and managed to not only survive, but have an epic adventure.
For this being Bethany’s first multi day bikepacking adventure, and a pretty difficult one at that, she did amazingly well. She’s not so sure she would do one with this magnitude of epicness again, but now she had an experience with which to compare all future adventures!
