A couple of weeks ago, while the high mountains were in less than ideal condition for skiing and the local trails were too soupy from snowmelt for mountain biking, I headed up into the network of gravel roads in the Arkansas Hills for some random exploring.
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To this point in my life, I’ve resisted the temptation to buy a GoPro. Several reasons.
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It’s a secret we don’t normally share with out-of-staters but one of the things we love most about Salida is its mellow climate. Typically in winter, while the mountains — the mountains we can see from our living room window — are getting buried in snow, down here in the valley we’re basking in sunshine. Don’t tell anyone.
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Mid-November. Still too early to ski. And while the higher-altitude trails are beginning to be snowed in, here in town the riding is great.
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Ah, fall in Colorado. Seeing the days slowly getting shorter and feeling the nights gradually getting cooler. Saying goodbye to the hiking and biking of summer and anticipating the skiing of winter. Time to downshift, kick back, and take it slow while nature works on changing its pallet from green and gold to green and white.
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Pikes Peak — America’s Mountain, America the Beautiful, purple mountain majesties and all that. Something I’ve been wanting to do for some time is to ride it. With summer starting to wind down, it occurred to me that I better get cracking if I was going to do it this year.
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The town I grew up in, Cañon City, is on the Front Range about an hour east of Salida. It’s 60 twisting, turning miles down the Arkansas River through Big Horn Sheep canyon. Growing up, we called this stretch of Highway 50 “the River Road”.
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So there I was, just riding along, nearing the end of my local Tuesday morning ride, not unlike hundreds of other morning rides I’ve done since moving to Salida. Being the middle of the week, there weren’t a lot of people out and I had the trails mostly to myself.
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It’s a testament to the quantity of trails around here that after riding 3 – 4 times a week most every week for three years straight there are still trails I haven’t explored. I’m a lucky man. One of those unexplored trails is Starvation Creek.
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