Bikepacking The CT: Copper, Leadville, Buena Vista

On the morning of Thursday July 23rd once again I crawled out of my sleeping bag at sunrise after a well earned sleep. We packed up the sleeping stuff and rode down to the Copper Mountain Ski Resort hoping to find a place to get breakfast. Somebody, I forget who, had told us about a Coffee Bar in the Copper Mountain Sports building so this is what I had in mind. After a little riding around we found the coffee bar which also had breakfast sandwiches and other stuff as well as a place to charge the phones, nice washrooms, and only a few golfers this time of day. Jackpot.
Our next resupply point would be Leadville. We found the trailhead and ended up traversing the ski runs passing under a couple of lifts and then back up to 12,000ft to Searle Pass then Kokamo Pass, Camp Hale, Tennessee Pass, and on to The Holy Cross Detour which took us around the Holy Cross and Mount Massive Wilderness areas and down to the town of Leadville at about 10,200ft. I think it was this afternoon that we passed the Lama Lady. Not actually sure whether they were Alpacas or Lamas but they were carrying all her gear.

After cruising down the main street of Leadville and checking out a couple motels we decided to take a room at The Silver King Motel. Yay, we can cleanup, use the WiFi, get dinner at Pizza Hut across the street and resupply at Safeway. We didn't know it at the time, but Leadville was world famous for silver mining in the late 1800s, had a population of 30,000 fortune hunters and made many fabulously wealthy including H. Tabor whose nickname was The Silver King.
The next morning we took full advantage of the Continental breakfast at The Silver King. Waffles, bagels, eggs, OJ, Coffee etc. We met Reid from Durango this morning. He had also started in Denver and was riding the CT home to Durango. We rode togethor through Twin Lakes to Buena Vista. I picked up my care package at the Buena Vista Post Office which was a nice moral boost then we found a burger place as we were craving greasy food and had burg fries and coke in the park. Later we rode on to Segment 11 and camped at Cottonwood Creek.





Train tunnels along the road beside the Arkansas River approaching Buena Vista.