My First Time

I grew up mountain biking in the Midwest, Michigan, specifically. I raced a beginner class circuit, and while it was fun, I felt limited by the trail. It was too known. Too planned. Four-and-a-half miles in a circuit a bunch of times over. What really got me excited was going beyond — whether that was beyond the trail, beyond my neighborhood, or beyond the city limit. I didn’t really know how to do that, but riding far — really far — was where the adventure felt hidden.

In high school, I rode my 1998 Cannondale Super V 900 from Grand Rapids, Michigan, to Big Rapids, Michigan with my buddy Chad, a total distance of about 55 miles, on mostly paved four-lane highway roads. This was a big deal at the time; We packed whatever we could fit into our knockoff Camelbaks, destined for Chad’s cottage up north. It was a distance we had never heard of anyone we knew riding, but after doing the math, it was well within our fitness levels. We made it, and there was power in that. It only took a few hours, but we broke through the barrier that defined “bike distance” and “car distance”.

A few years later, I got into backpacking. I became obsessed with the small form factor of backpacking tents, stoves, and anything that nested. Anything with well-thought detail or multipurpose elated me. I remember the velcro zipper latch on my North Face Cat’s Meow sleeping bag had a smaller zipper, for holding a watch alarm. I thought this was just utterly brilliant. Thoughtful details.

Sometime in college, I called up my childhood friend Jake, another avid backpacker, and asked if he thought we could ‘bikepack’, which to me, meant backpacking, but on our bikes. We both thought it worth a try, and loaded up our 40lb packs and mountain bikes, and set off for the North Country Trail in northern Michigan. We didn’t test anything out in our neighborhood, and I would wager a guess that that was on purpose; any noted failure here would jeopardize or cancel this trip, something neither of us were prepared for. We arrived at the NCT trailhead, parked the car, and tightened all the straps on the backpacks, just as we would if we were setting off on foot. I remember standing alongside my Cannondale, throwing a leg over the Y-frame, and feeling the momentum of that enormous weight on my back carry right on over the bike, myself included. Picking myself up from the ground, I realized in that moment that this was going to be a challenging voyage. When I did finally get my butt on the saddle, backpack still attached, I pedaled into the trail. The V-brakes were working overtime to slow the bike, and leaning into a corner while that top-heavy was simply unrealistic. Watching Jake suffer the same trouble I was having, we admitted defeat some short miles into the trail, and determined an overnighter by foot was a better option for us. The concept of ‘bikepacking’ continued to elude me.

Skip ahead a decade and a half, to a time when gravel bike riding was rushing toward its peak. People were learning to explore the world by bike in new and different ways. Salsa documentaries Reveal the Path and Ride the Divide were popular, and names like Lael Wilcox and Mike Hall were finding celebrity status among the cycling community. I had to get a taste of this adventure — to set out with everything I needed and not come back until all the miles were ridden.

I knew my friend Ben was interested in this form of adventure too. We made a route somewhat close to home, starting just south of Nederland, Colorado, traversing West toward the Moffat Tunnel, before heading north and west over Rollins Pass. We’d descend Rollins down toward Winter Park, and find a place to camp nearby. Day two would take us around a big loop west of Winter Park, before finally looping back to the east side of the Front Range by Day 3.

My budget was light, and I needed to take advantage of as much equipment that I already had as I could. I had an aluminum Masi CXR with 37mm tires given to me by a friend, and a bunch of dry bags and Voile straps. I could see fairly quickly that I’d need at least one piece of ‘real’ equipment, and I sprung for the Oveja Negra half frame bag, and Front End Loader, as a cradle for my dry bag. I stuffed my tent, sleeping pad, and sleeping bag into an 8L dry bag from Sea to Summit I picked up on Amazon, which completely filled the space between the hoods of my drop bars. Like….I couldn’t shift without the shifter paddle pressing into the dry bag. I found a top tube bag I’d gotten for free in a Bike to Work Day event years back, and I strapped two Osprey dry bags to my saddle and seatpost with Voile straps, giving everything the obligatory “that ain’t going anywhere” shake, convinced it’d all hold up. I had Kraft Easy Mac and oatmeal packets for my food, a ton of tiny individually packaged World Market foods for trailside, an aluminum pot packed in the same bag as my clothes, and about 10 pounds of Chaco sandals lashed to the drybag on the handlebar. It was a disorganized mess, but it was all there.

Pre-departure

We were firstly most excited about the concept of being away from the kids and family, with nothing more to do than ride bikes all day. We pedaled up through the long-gone townsite of Tolland, before switching back up into the Rollins Pass area. I learned a lot of fast lessons in no time at all. First of all, 37mm WTB Riddlers are unquestionably the wrong choice for Rollins Pass — I wouldn’t ride it again without suspension, let alone tires that skinny. Next, my Front End Loader with the weight of the dry bag and the Chacos flopping around kept rotating the load down into my front tire, causing for many stops along the way to retighten overloaded straps. My saddle dry bag was swaying left and right and left and right with every pedal stroke. But there was no denying it — this was everything I’d hoped it’d be. The sunshine, the remoteness, the uncharted territory — this was it. The real deal.

I’m a huge advocate for underplanning the ride mileage, in order to leave yourself some time to explore a little. That mindset came from this trip. We found an old mining cave up near the summit of Rollins Pass, and ditched the bikes to go explore that. Later in the trip, we discovered an abandoned railbed that led to some old trestles, which we crossed and subsequently bushwhacked back to the trail. None of that happens with a day crammed with miles and a place to be. Anyhow, we crested Rollins Pass with some daylight remaining, and descended into National Forest land toward Winter Park.

We picked a campsite about 5 miles up from Winter Park. Ben got the Firebox Nano stove rolling (first time use, another rookie and potentially dangerous decision) and we were able to boil water for backpacking food and Easy Mac. A status check on my gear revealed that my aluminum pot was wearing a hole through my dry bag from within. The tent, sleeping bag, and pad all went up just fine, but it was clear that I needed a rearrangement for day 2, both to keep my clothes dry, and minimize further destruction of the dry bag. After a nice toasty campfire, we retired to our respective tents.

Ben and I awoke to soaked everything. We knew rain was in the forecast, and this was part of it — you go out in the wilderness, you have to expect Mother Nature to show up. We tried to wait out the rain, but ultimately decided to leave our camp set up and drop into Winter Park without our load and warm up at a coffee shop. I debated whether or not this was cheating; or if maybe we weren’t cut out for the reality of being a long distance from home and able to fend for ourselves in all conditions? Were we not prepared for this? We called up a friend living in Winter Park, and visited for the day. We didn’t let the lost miles bother us; this was our trip, to be spent the way we felt best spending it.

We climbed back up to the site after a day in the town, with all its warm food comforts, beer, and simply dry seating, and got our final night’s rest.

Morning broke on Day 3, and we had no choice but to ride home, regardless of what the skies brought us. The day started gray, but without precipitation. We got an early jump in order to take advantage of the dry weather. As we climbed back up to Rollins Pass, it felt as though we might just beat the impending storm. As I mentioned before, we found an old railbed that veered off our charted course. Maps suggested that it connected back with our route just ahead, so we chose to explore it. This was an adventure after all, weather be damned! The railbed offered a series of decaying trestles, which was unlike anything I’d seen before — and in much worse state than the trestles at the peak of Rollins. We cautiously crossed the old timber (we walked, for the record) and carried on to end of the spur.

We climbed on, approaching the peak of Rollins Pass. A heavy fog started to move in, and the air was extremely damp — almost as though you could touch the air. We were inside an actual cloud. The visibility eventually decreased to near zero, and we weren’t really sure what was next, but there was an impending sense that we hadn’t seen the end. We approached the big trestles at the top of Rollins, when the sleet and wind showed up. Fortunately — there was no thunder or lightning; we know well enough about mountain dangers that this would have driven us down the mountain. Despite the ride occurring deep into the August month, temperatures plummeted to 37 degrees at the peak of the pass. Wind whipped across our faces, and we took shelter behind an ancient hunting blind above Needle’s Eye Tunnel. We knew we had to start dropping some elevation, or we’d be cold AND soaked.

Treeline becomes an important marker for descending in weather like this, whether it’s for reducing the threat of a lightning strike, or cutting the wind impact. We moved as fast as we could once we crossed that apex threshold, but these skinny 37mm tires (for reference, I now run the equivalent of 53mm tires on that same setup) over the slippery wet rock and quickly deepening puddles were doing me no favors. I was being rattled to death by my own bike. Speed was simply not an option for this descent. Fortunately, I was wearing a decent Marmot raincoat, but my shoes were soaked, I had shorts on, and “Why would I pack gloves in August?”. The mud spray from the dirt road had worn away my brake pads to almost nothing. In fact, as we approached the bottom of this descent, I had adjusted my mechanical brake calipers to full extension, and I still could not stop the bike without putting a foot down. (A word to the wise: carry an extra set of brake pads. Use the smallest Altoids container you can find for your small spare parts.) If you’ve ever done any camping in the rain, you know that bags get awfully heavy, and the fabrics stretch out into newly contorted shapes that maybe you hadn’t intended at the outset. Ben and I were both fighting keeping bags held in place, from front to rear of the bikes.

The rain and cold didn’t stop until we arrived back at our starting place, a cabin south of Nederland. The dry bags did what they were supposed to, although there were several new punctures and spots worn through from constant rubbing and chafing against all the surfaces. The bike wheels and cranks kept on turning, and we arrived, fully intact.

So why share this story? Because it was a pretty ill-prepared (in some ways under- and other ways over-), poorly loaded, awful weather bikepacking trips I’ve ever taken, and it easily ranks among my favorites. There was a call to go, to explore, to DIY my way across the mountains. I went, I learned a LOT, and I survived. I probably haven’t been as uncomfortable during a bikepacking trip as I was during that one. But you know what? It was fine. And I didn’t need $2000 in shiny new gear to make it so. I used what I had, I considered what I knew about backpacking, and had faith in myself that I’d figure out the rest. That’s exactly what happened.

Here I am now, several years removed from that fateful trip, and that’s still the one that made me fall in love with this unique and purest form of adventure. I hope you’ll find it too.