Day 35 – Gunnison to Montrose

So I’m sure not every day in the Rockies will be like today, but I can sure hope they are. Beautiful weather, more downhill than up, and relatively short. Seriously, it was a lot of fun…. Tho JP wasn’t feeling well, so hopefully that doesn’t happen again 🙂

Today was supposed to be a social ride… We had 2 local riders who were going to join JP and I for the trek in to Montrose. Unfortunately they ended up not being make to make it. Then, this morning, JP got up not feeling well. So instead of a pack ride with 4 of us, I went out solo shortly after 7a.

It was actually cold this morning… 48 when I rolled out of bed. I left the hotel with arm warmers, a vest, and knee warmers on. Even with all that, I was definitely cold for the first 10 miles.

Heidi was on her way in the MCC shortly after I left. Somehow I missed the hot air balloons taking off, but she saw them on the way out of town.

The ride today took us past the Blue Mesa Reservoir, a 15 mile long reservoir on the Gunnison. Very scenic and I’m sure filled with amazingly good fishing tho there was no time for that.

Along that section, I got passed by the SAG vehicle for the 4K for Cancer ride. Yesterday in Gunnison we saw some of the riders from this ride walking around town. Heidi got to visit with some of them for a bit and found out many of them are from the Baltimore area. They are riding the “Heartbeat of America” route that goes up and down the country like an EKG. Super impressed with their ride and we wish them a lot of luck. We had hoped to run into them again along the route, but it looks like we’ll be missing each other by a few days.

After the reservoir, there was some climbing. The climbs in the Rockies generally aren’t very steep (8% max) but they’re definitely long. I got 2.8k’ of climbing in today, but that came over probably 15 miles of road on those climbs. Lots of long, slow gear turning. On the flip side the downhills tend to be fun without turning in to white knuckle events.

JP started feeling better after some rest and SAG’d up to the second major climb of the day. He got on the saddle, powered up the hill, and came cruising in to Montrose. Nice to see him on the road even if he wasn’t feeling 100%.

The ride in to Montrose from the top of the last climb was basically 15 miles of downhill. It was fast and tons of fun. At some point I was on a flat stretch and thought “boy am I going slow”… I looked down and I was cruising along at 19mph. After the previous 5 miles at 25mph+, 19 felt slow. Cool.

After the ride, we went looking for a place to fish. The folks in Gunnison told us about the Black Canyon and all the awesome fishing there.

When we got to the ranger station to pay our admission fee we were instructed that the maximum length for vehicles going down to the river is 22’… and the MCC clocks in at  24.5′ long. Lame. Strangely the ranger at the booth said “well, you could try it and see if you get in trouble for it.” Uh, no. I’d prefer the MCC not get stuck somewhere on a 1,500′ descent down a canyon wall.

With no trip down to river for fishing, we went for the visitor center on the canyon rim. As it turns out, the Black Canyon is a pretty damn big canyon. I had no idea.

Even the boys thought the canyon was cool.

The visitor center had an observation deck where you could walk out right to the edge of the canyon wall to get a good view of how crazy deep and narrow this canyon really is. Heidi’s not a fan of heights so I thought this was as close to the deck as she’d get:

Nope, she went right down with the boys and snapped some shots.

After the canyon trip, Dax was wiped out. I’m sure he was comfy, but honestly this looks painful.

After Black Canyon, we were still looking to do some fishing. A bit of research later we found a pond just south of town that was well stocked and perfect for the boys to continue to work on their fly casting skills.

They weren’t kidding about “well stocked.” Bobby caught 4 fish in about 15 minutes.

I caught one while I was screwing around with a rod. Terran… well, he got some good practice in. He’ll have to get his first fish further downstream.

For all the downhill we had today, we’ll pay the price tomorrow. We finish the day in Telluride at nearly 9k’ after 2 relatively long, sustained climbs. What goes around, comes around I guess. Till tomorrow…