I want to remind myself to start keeping track of van maintenance. Before leaving to Durango I changed the air filter, oil, and oil filter. The van came with some "credits" I could use at the dealership and so this is the first time I performed all of these tasks myself. I'd like to keep track of cost in order to compare/contrast with other means of adventuring. That is, if I didn't get a van and only stayed in Air-B-n-B's or camped in tents.

Anyway, the Forests in New Mexico are mostly closed due to fire danger. I left Friday afternoon for one of the cutest places on this wet planet: Durango, CO.

Arriving in this magical place--for the first time since winter--I immediately hit the Colorado Trail. For some reason this winter I had a mild binge of CT bike packing series on youtube: fisrt by Kara and Nate and again with Ryan van Duzer. What better mic-drop to NM being on fire than biking the CT? I had ambitions to bike it as out-and-backs, and while that still might happen, it might also take me a few years.

Back of the napkin math time (sorry). According to Bikepacking.com the CT is 539 miles in length. Only 55% of it is singletrack (I don't know their exact metric but objectors should remember this is a napkin) which means I'm only really interested in biking 296 miles of it. If I could each section perfectly as an out-and-back that would mean I had to do 592 miles. In reality I'm going to add a 10% multiplier to that due to not being able to get to all sections of the trail, brining us to 651 miles. If I can manage 25 miles in a weekend, that's right around 26 weekends and thus it's possible to do across two summers.

So this is the first 10 miles of the CT heading out of Durango (west, oddly). Heading to the next trail head took me out to La Plata City dispersed campgrounds along FR142. Which, by the way, is beautiful.

This is where my plan sort of crumbles. FR142 climbs to the first trail head along the CT at around 10500 feet above sea level. And in the middle of May, is totally snowed out.

So yeah after over an hour of driving on precarious rocky roads that was fun to discover. I regrouped, ate some lunch, and headed Jones Creek trail in Hermosa which stays well below 10k.

Unsurprisingly, it was great. The elevation gain was beastly as it climbs 1000 feet in 4.5 miles but then you get to go down.