Bikepacking The CT: Sargents Mesa, Hwy 114, Gunnison

 Rose shortly after sunrise on Monday July 27th to another sunny day in the high country. The hikers that were camped nearby at Tank Seven Creek were already gone. This was day nine on the trail and the established routine was filter water, make breakfast and coffee, wash pack and then try to turn circles with the legs.

Sargents Mesa

One thousand feet of climbing  in the first five miles doesn't even seem noteworthy so I guess the first point of interest this day was Sargents Mesa, a grassy plateau at about 11,300ft that looked like it would be a good place for grazing elk.

Flowers near Baldy Lake

Further down the trail we came to the turn to Baldy Lake but we were good for water so didn't want to detour down to the lake. Continuing on we passed from the San Juan National Forest to the Gunnison National Forest and encountered a herd of cows while descending a jeep road to Highway 114.

Gunnison National Forest

At highway 114 we stopped for coffee and a map check.
We had seen Jesse Jakomait pass earlier in the day and now a second competitor in the Colorado Trail Race passed. For them to be at this point meant they had to be riding all nite on this terrain with maybe one hour of sleep. Ouch!

Highway 114 descending through Cotchetopah Canyon.

We agreed that based on the way things were going at this point, we would most likely not make it to Durango on time for our flight out. We were looking at The La Garita Detour of fifty miles before we could resupply at Lake City and then a monster climb up to Coney at 13,200ft if we tried to stick to the original plan. We needed an alternate plan so we decided to ride down to Gunnison, take a motel room, rent a car in the morning and drive to Durango. This would give us a couple days to ride the trails around Durango and figure out how to get our bikes shipped home.

Everything fit in the Kia Sportage no problem.

The next thirty miles were descending on Hwy 114 through Cotchetopah Canyon with almost no traffic. After the turn towards Gunnison we rode with a cyclotourist from the UK who had started in Virginia. At Gunnison we turned in at McDonalds and I think James had two meal combos an extra large coke and a McFlurry then we checked into the Econolodge had a shower, raided the vendng machines and used the WiFi.