Sometimes It Goes Like That
Bikepacking is hard. We build in the ‘hard’ on purpose, many times. Then weather or mechanicals happen, and take it from challenging to miserable. This story takes place in delightful weather in a pristine setting in New Mexico, on exceptionally tuned bikes. But even without the extra bit that intangibles can add, the intentionally added ‘hard’ can get in the way.
“7:00 AM? I don’t know. 7 hour drive and then a 40 mile day? 6:00? How about 6:30?”
It was Valles Caldera day. Ben and I had been reviewing this route for over a year. Originally planned for 2022, but diverted due to wildfire, the trip had come around. Using the bikepacking.com Valles Caldera Explorer v2.0 route as our guide, we worked logistics from a four-day ride, down to 3, including drive time.
We made our way down to New Mexico from the Boulder area via the scenic highway 285, before arriving later than anticipated to the literal front gates of the Los Alamos National Laboratory. We elected to bypass the ride up from city-center Los Alamos, and start at Camp May near the Pajarito ski area. It was a good thing we cut all that mileage off, in retrospect.
The route we selected was a reverse of the bikepacking.com established route, which we chose so that we could camp near the San Antonio hot springs the first night. It would take a 40 mile day on fully loaded hardtails, but we figured we were in for a manageable 5 or so hour day. Starting in on the downturn of the day’s light, we hit the trail at 3:00. The geography of Valles Caldera is bizarre; a protected National Preserve and dormant supervolcano, the walls of the caldera ‘bowl’ rise 1,500 to 2,000 feet above the valley floor below. The valley itself is a vast expanse of grassy meadow, criss-crossed with two-track rutted farm roads, minus a few maintained passenger dirt roads. There is also no camping within the preserve boundary; this put added pressure to be in and out of the Preserve with enough time to locate a campsite. However, the Preserve is surrounded by National Forest land, and we expected ease with finding a suitable site.
The route starts with singletrack out of the Pajarito Ski Area, and climbs to the outer wall of the caldera. The first moment of trouble appeared on this climb, when the paracord dangling from my Old Man Mountain Elkhorn rack found its way into my cassette, and locked up the drivetrain fully. After about 20 minutes of unwinding, the rope was free, and the chain tracked once again. We crested the top of the high point to descend into the caldera, a route known for its dead tree downfall. Most trees had been cleared from the route, but this -12% grade introduced us to our first bit of hike-a-bike, ducking and maneuvering between tree branch skewers.
Bypassing a gate marked “VC”, the grade relaxed a bit, and the huge expansive meadow came into view.
We approached a vehicle closure gate, and paused for a moment to grab some calories, and for Ben to exercise his Valles Caldera fishing license, which took some extra effort to acquire. The afternoon sun clock was ticking, but we didn’t feel an ounce of urgency.
After a handful of unsuccessful casts, we continued down the rutted road, dodging some pretty massive puddles, including one that took me all the way to the ground. I picked the grass out of my handlebar, and traversed the rolling terrain until meeting a fellow bikepacker, stopped and eating a trailside bar. “Doing the route in reverse? You should be fine — pretty stiff climb ahead to get out of the bowl, but you’ll manage.” We said our goodbyes and followed our GPS signals until it was time to exit the Preserve to the North.
A stiff climb indeed: the climb spanned just 1.25 miles, but rose 2,300 feet. With grades ranging between 11 and 20%, even the 52-tooth Eagle cog was unbearable. Physical distance grew between Ben and I, as we each chose different times for our stops, our breath catching, and our hike-a-bikes. Every time I rounded a corner, expecting to see some amount of leveling, the hill continued on. Eventually I could see the end, but not before tracing its winding path around the bowl wall to where I stood. There was a long, long way to go.
One and a quarter miles took us 84 minutes. For those of you playing along at home, that math works out to less than 1 mph. Bikepacking is like that sometimes — you want to roam these wonderful, untouched places, but many of these remote locales are brutal; not meant for human-powered travel. Fortunately, as they say, if you didn’t push your bike at some point, did you even have an adventure?
We crested an elevation of around 10,200 feet, as the shadows started to grow long as the sun lowered for the day. We were outside the Preserve, and camping was now a free-for-all. This was our backup plan, that if 40 miles on a late start proved too much, we could camp anywhere short of that, so long as it was outside the Preserve. 10,200 feet is no slouch though — no running water and 20 degree sleeping bags weren’t an ideal situation for making camp. So we carried onward, light on energy, having thrown most of our surplus at the forewarned Stiff Climb. We pressed on until….a gate, and a barbed wire fence.
Now what? There was no signage for private property, and there was a clearly marked stump with an arrow pointing to continue along a vague footpath next to the barbed wire fence. Maybe 200 feet into hiking the obscure trail, we stopped and consulted the GPS. The footpath continued on, in apparent disregard for the correct direction, and there was some cut barbed wire next to us, suggesting that perhaps others had come to this same crux of decision making. While we pored over the maps, the sun was continuing to set, and an actual swarm of mosquitoes had found us where we stood. Not wanting to be carried away by the swarming pests, we made the quick judgment call to follow our predecessors over the barbed wire, moving in a frantic panic as the mosquito bites sank into our arms and legs.
An open gate with grazing cows awaited us just across the fencing, while we assured our paths were back on track.
We were now in the northern part of the route, beyond the border of the Valles Caldera preserve, in the “it should be all downhill from there” part. (It wasn’t.) Still hanging around 10,500 feet, we were zipping through a high alpine forest, our lashed items clanging around on the racks behind us. We were finally realizing our first real speed of the day, weaving from one line to the other, which was interrupted by a quick grip of the brake levers as a pair of elk bolted across the road right in front of us. That blast of adrenaline and reaction time instilled a bit of caution from then on, watching the road edges for similar surprises.
We steadily trimmed elevation until about 8:00, when the sun had just about completely slipped below the canyon walls we were now surrounded by. I was totally torched by this point. Way deficient on calories (despite carrying enough to last me about a week), not really in awesome shape, and just plain ready to lay down in my tent and sleep, the bonk came all the way to the surface. Ben’s desire to camp as close to the hot springs as possible was apparent, and my spirit was rooting for the same, but my body was not playing along. I told Ben I needed to get to a site pretty imminently, but I’d go as far as I could.
We had descended into the San Antonio River valley, and dusk had fully settled in. It was becoming increasingly difficult to see what may have been sites along the river, but one thing was certain — the river was enclosed by miles of fencing on both sides. The fence would occasionally break at certain rapids and sharp curvatures in the river, but access was absolutely limited. We noted a few locations with large, purpose-built ladders (i.e. not built by a passerby to defy the fencing intent), so we assumed the blockage was wildlife driven. The river was stunning; it meandered through a deep canyon with strange white sandstone features all around.
A second wind arrived for me, giving me just enough fuel to start to feel the same motivation to camp at the hot springs that Ben was exuding. We arrived at the entrance to the Springs, a steep staircase and a big, brown “DAY USE ONLY” sign, indicating camping was not allowed at the hot spring. Not really a surprise, but it also meant we had to double back to the last site we had found, which fortunately was just a short ride up canyon. The site had flowing water and a cool fire ring, and plenty of space for Ben and I to stretch out. The bummer part was that it was well into darkness by now, and we really only had time to make a fire to warm up, cook our food, and get to sleep. No camp sitting time for us today.
Sometimes it goes like that.
“….and then it occurred to me what she was doing! It was a mama mountain lion, and she was trying to pass her baby to me. It was crazy!”
The obnoxious voices echoed off the canyon walls at 5:30 AM, nevermind the ridiculous falsehood of the story being shouted. Who they were and why they were so close to our campsite would normally have drawn our attention to engage, but now, after yesterday’s ride, and THIS EARLY, the only wish was for whoever was yelling to stop. Immediately. The voices faded as the distance grew — just some hikers on the road near our campsite — but sleep was interrupted. Ben didn’t get back to his shut-eye; he rose and chased his holy grail of the trip, the San Antonio hot springs. I eventually dozed off, and woke to find Ben, several hours later, making his breakfast outside the tents.
We each prepped our oatmeal and coffee, and chased the first bits of sun up the canyon wall, trying to get some heat back into our bodies. Ben indicated to me that once we got some food in our bellies, he was ready for his second hot spring soak of the day. I had actually never been in a natural hot spring before, and was excited to see what it was about. We left camp mostly set up, aside from some simple tidying effort, and rolled our unloaded bikes over to the hot springs. Per the guidance from bikepacking.com, we hauled our titanium machines up the couple hundred feet of footpath, and parked next to the hot springs. It didn’t take long for me to place the loud voices from 5:30, sitting in the pool front of me. We slipped into the water adjacent to three hikers, desperate for them to tone it down a little.
The water was amazing. Pouring out from pipes running deep into the caldera wall, the water reportedly exited at a delightful 105 degrees, which was perfect on the chilly morning. Simply running water through one’s hair after a full day on the bike and rinsing sweat and grease from the body is great, but an actual bath? Now that’s a rarity on a bikepacking trip. I stretched a little in the water, and felt all my muscles come back online. I’d have some energy to turn the cranks today. After about 45 minutes of soaking in the soothing warmth, we dried ourselves off and made our way back down to the canyon floor.
“Let’s not make today a 5 hour day, ok?” said Ben, in reference to yesterday’s slog of miles, and palpable desperation to get his Tenkara out for some fishing. We departed camp around 11:00, well rested and relaxed.
Day 2 was set to bring us a lengthy run of pavement before turning back into the Preserve. We exited the Forest Service Road that took us from our campsite, passing a number of hikers headed up to the hot springs. It would be a busy day up there, for certain. The 4 or so miles of pavement was a relief; just coasting, no traffic to speak of, and no pedaling. Just morning air in our faces. The pavement descent ended at Amanda’s Jemez Mountain Country Store where we popped in for some lunch and Coca-Cola sugar fuel. Lots of folks stopped to ask where we were headed and where we had ridden from, each one impressed with how far we were from the start.
After a short climb on the paved highway, we turned off onto Sulphur Creek Road, and it didn’t take long to reach some otherworldly terrain. We stumbled into a sulfur mine, which smelled enormously like a freshly struck match. The hills in the area were mostly barren and coated in a white rock; stagnant pools of water sat idly adjacent to well-preserved mining camp structures. We explored the area, but pressed on, eager to get to our campsite and do some fishing.
The road meandered further up into the woods, and the fresh alpine returned to the senses; a bit of humidity, the smell of the pine, and a light, cool breeze. A trickling stream ran alongside the road — too small to fish — and we were now approaching 9,000 feet as we re-entered the preserve.
Once again, the day was running later than expected; we were already at about 3:00, with still many miles remaining within the Preserve boundary. While our morning soak was time well spent, it certainly left us again pressured to make good time through the Preserve and begin locating a campsite. The miles ticked off without too much discomfort, although my legs were definitely running on Day 2 supply, feeling ragged and quick to tire. Ben and I stopped to filter water from one of the many wandering streams, and met a pair of fly fishermen who’d indicated they had pulled several 14” trout from the stream. You’d have never guessed that from the small size of the stream.
Just ahead of us sat the ranger station. It was a welcome reprieve, where we stretched our muscles and backs, and regrouped where we were on the day. The ranger talked at length with us about the Preserve, and her favorite part, the wildlife. She indicated that bears and elk had both been particularly active in the local area over the last few days. She was new to the area, and on assignment for a six month stay at the Preserve. We showed her our general plan for camping, notably a picnic area on National Forest land, and the concept of hiking beyond the picnic day use area and camping there. She concurred that the plan should work, given the rules of National Forests.
It was about 5PM when we left the ranger station, and she encouraged us, saying we only had about 6 miles to go before reaching camp. Ben and I were both excited to have some daylight to hang out, sip some whiskey, and cast some lines.
We reached the exit of the Preserve, right on the money at 6 miles, ready to call it a day. We headed west from the park exit, onto highway tarmac. Our picnic area sat about 2.5 miles steadily downhill from the exit. We pulled into the lot, among a handful of families enjoying the picnic space. It was slightly awkward, as we slowly cased the whole place by bike, in what was obvious to me that we were looking for camping. Ben and I spent what felt like an eternity trying to interpret the language of the signage (“no overnight parking” isn’t the same as “no camping” — or is it?) until we finally decided to hike a footpath with our much-too-heavy-to-hike-with bicycles. This effort involved a river crossing on a narrow log, but fortunately we stayed dry throughout. As we ventured down the trail and out of sight of the picnic area, the trail came to an abrupt ending amid a small boulder field, and against a steep slope. There’d be no camping here.
We reversed course, back across the skinny log bridge, and into the picnic area parking lot. What now? There appeared to be another river and parking area just another mile downhill on the highway from where we stood. We hopped on with tired legs and tired spirits, and arrived at one of the most stunning river valleys we’d seen on this trip, the Las Conchas Trailhead. Certain that we’d found our stop for the night, we navigated around a parking lot full of cars, only to be met with a sign that said “No camping, next 16 miles.”
16 miles?!?!? Our odometers for the day already read around 40, 16 miles was not an option. so NOW what?
We had two options; head further down the mountain road (all of which would need to be re-climbed in the morning), or head back the way we came (2.5 miles of climbing) to find something closer to the preserve entrance. We knew there was a Forest Service Road up there, but we also knew there was no running water. Perhaps we could fill all of our water vessels prior to the climb, and still at least have a fire at some established site.
We opted to climb. Slowly and steadily, watching our campsite lounge time fade with the setting sun, we trudged back up the long hill we’d just coasted down only an hour prior. We reached the forest service road, which went….up. It was a beautiful road, but it was apparent that no one really camps here. Flat spots for a tent, any evidence of a campfire or fire ring, and water were all completely absent from this area. We followed the temptation of checking around “one more bend” several times, before admitting defeat, and yet again, backtracking to the flattest spot we could find.
After hiking through open fields assessing what was actually ‘flat,’ we settled on a cattle trail (complete with cow patties that needed to be kicked aside) and set up tents in immediate contact with one another. We lamented how poorly the day had gone, how bummed we were that we never got to fish, and how much time we had just spent trying to find a place to pitch a tent. We were again both pretty tired, so we hammered out a couple dinners, crushed some whiskey and rum, and started hoping for a better day tomorrow. We threw all of our food and snack bags into a dry bag, and hoisted it into a tree, recollecting that the ranger said there had been bear activity in the area. The last thing we needed was a run in with a bear.
Night descended on the makeshift campsite. With no fire to sit around and exhausted bodies anyway, we called it a day, hopeful for a short exit day in the morning. I laid my head on my pillow, trying to focus on sleep and not the eerily dead silence outside my tent. When it’s that quiet outside, especially at night, you hear everything.
And then, as I lay there, I heard a very distinct sound of several cracking branches, and then the sound of something heavy — and very much alive — running with heavy thumps into the forest. “Was that an animal?” Ben broke the silence between the two tents. “Uhhh, yeah, that was definitely an animal. Was that cracking sound our food bag falling from the tree?” I played out the scenario in my mind — worst case scenario, a bear pulled down our food bag. The bear eats the food. We don’t have food for day 3, and have to leg it out for 20 miles back to the car. Not really a major issue. Except…..my car keys are in that bag. If a bear just ran off with our food bags, it also ran off with our ride home.
Now the stakes have changed. There is zero chance I fall asleep tonight if I don’t know that that bag is still hanging in the tree. I put my headlamp on my forehead, and stared at the door for several minutes. I did not want to leave this tent and walk into the darkness. Ben could hear that I needed an answer to this before I went to sleep. “Are you going out there?” “Yep, you?” I asked, hopeful that he’d join me on his own accord. “Nah. I’m sure everything is fine.” Well SHIT. It’s just me. Here we go. I unzipped the inner tent, and grasped the rain fly zipper, half expecting to see eyes staring right back at me on the other side of the fly. Like ripping off a band-aid, I unzipped the fly. Nothing around….no eyes in the distance reflecting back at me. So far so good. I slipped on my Teva sandals and started walking down the path toward the tree where the bag should be hanging. I panned the horizon for as far as my little headlamp would illuminate. Still no eyes. It was much harder to pick out the bag tree in the dark. I flashed up a few trunks, and saw a reflective logo flash back at me from high up in the tree. The bag was still there! I scurried back to my tent, moving as fast as a person can without running, and slipped back into my sleeping bag.
As the adrenaline just started to fade, I heard the unmistakable sound of a pack of coyotes in the distance celebrating something — far enough away to not be concerned, but close enough to be wide eyed in the dark. Two more times through the night I heard those coyotes yelping their energetic songs, and sometime around sunrise, I finally drifted to sleep.
“Russ. There’s a cow right outside my tent.”
“I thought we were on the other side of the fence from the grazing fields?”
“Guess not. There’s a whole damn family staring at me.”
After Ben shooed the cattle further up the hillside from where we slept, we crawled out of the tents and immediately began tearing down camp. As per plan, we skipped breakfast, and hopped back onto the saddles after what felt like just a handful of hours off of them. The legs were stiff, but we got the jump on the morning that we needed to both ride the remaining 14 miles to the car and build in a 7 hour drive back home. It was a fresh, sunny morning, with just a thin veil of cloud cover. The drop from 9,500 feet was a good way to start the day. We had low expectations that much would be different from the previous pair of days.
We found our route entry back into the Preserve. Today’s roads were long on descents, and big on views. It was nice to have some speed on these pretty rough roads — that had felt like a real rarity over the 3 days of riding. It was very tough to find any kind of flow, and our hardtails weren’t doing our bodies any favors by rattling our bones the way they were.
As we completed the route through the valley, we happened upon a large group of cyclists, out for their Sunday morning ride. They took great interest in what we were doing, and how. “You’ve got a tent on that bike?” “How do you make food?” I took out my Firebox Nano Stove, and popped it open in the palm of my hand. The gasps and giggles in the group indicated to me that they understood well just how cool all this bikepacking stuff was. “Well look at that! It fits right into that tiny case!” Obviously quite familiar with the area, they asked which route we were taking back to the car. When the Pipeline trail was mentioned, there were some raised eyebrows, and other concerned faces about the downfall and the grade. We offered up that we had taken this route in, so we knew what we were in for. We got a recommendation for a place to grab a beer after the ride, and we all went our separate ways.
The climb wasn’t as brutal as either of us expected it to be. After some anticipated hike-a-bike, we arrived at the Pajarito singletrack section that returned us to the car. After the weekend that seemed to be absent of strokes of good luck (to be fair, we had great weather and no mechanicals), we half expected the car to be on cinder blocks. But there, parked right where we left it, was my blue 4Runner, and our ride back home.
“How long do you think it’ll be before we forget how terrible this ride was and we’re telling our friends that it was awesome?” Ben asked me. “One week,” I said.
Sometimes it goes like that.