Married With Bikes: San Juan Huts Durango to Moab Day 3: downhill to rainbow colored clouds

This is the 4th post in a series about 3 couples experiencing the San Juan Huts Durango to Moab mountain bike adventure. The first post starts here.

Days 1 and 2 were amazing. Amazing scenery, amazingly variable weather, amazingly long days in the saddle, amazingly compatible people. Day 3 was smooth sailing downhill on easy roads to a cozy hut with a lucky break or two.

Black Mesa hut specifics

Before I tell of our lovely ride on day 3, I wanted to give you a few details about the hut we stayed in on night 2.

Black Mesa Hut nestled in the big pines.

Can you think of a more peaceful setting for a composting toilet?

Perhaps my readers do not care to see the inside of the composting toilet shack, but as I am one for details, here you go. The procedure for doing your business was: 1) do your business, 2) deposit your used toilet tissue and NOTHING ELSE (many signs warning about the horrible consequences for someone if garbage is added to the toilet), and 3) add half a scoop of wood shavings from the large garbage can. Their was surprisingly little smell and no flies that I remember. I didn't spend a whole lot of time in the shack though.

Downhill to the desert

The route today had one small single track option, that, frankly, didn't sound very appealing. (Overgrown, difficult trail that would add a couple of hours.) We decided to take the FS roads and county roads all the way to the hut instead, as we needed a "rest day". This turned out to be a good decision, as you will learn later. On the agenda was 2061 feet of climbing (is that a rest day?) and 54547 feet of descending (oh yeah!) over 35.2 miles.

The crew ready to depart Black Mesa Hut, Day3

We rode on well-maintained roads almost the entire day, through conifer forest for the first 15 miles or so. The scenery was not as spectacular as our first couple of days, but still nice and the smell of fresh pine forest was intoxicating. I wanted to inhale 100% of the time.

Our directions said this was "Navajo Mountain and Groundhog Reservoir". Is that really the name? There must be a story there.

Our last good view of high country from near the border between the Uncompahgre and San Juan National Forests and the San Miguel and Dolores Counties. The mountains in the distance are on the Uncompahgre Plateau. I wanted to stop and take more pictures, but the group seemed to be in a rush. This is often the story of my vacations.

Side note: this picture shows the size of my pack pretty well. Without water, I was carrying 18 pounds of gear and packs. Pretty lean for a 7 day trip at elevation. It also show my hair poking through my helmet, which Drew thought was picture worthy.

This is as "singletrack" as we got on Day 3.

The climbing was mellow, the descending was even mellower. It was so mellow I could take pictures while riding looking back at some of the group.

And then we came to Miramonte Reservoir. Beautifully quiet, refreshingly cool, surprisingly clean Miramonte Reservoir at 7750 feet elevation. My lunch of cherry pie Lara bar in honor of Pie n Beer day was made infinitely better by watching Karl ride his dirty bike into the water.

The reservoir was also a great place to clean bikes and bodies.

It was getting into afternoon, and Heather, who seems to have an internal barometer warning her of impending rain, urged us to get back on those moderately clean but still uncomfortable bikes and head for the hut before we got doused with an afternoon thunderstorm.

We pounded out another 6 miles of easy gravel road to arrive at Dry Creek Hut, perched on the edge of a beautiful valley. Here is the Relive 3D graphic of our ride.

Day 3 recap video link

https://www.relive.cc/view/1106114071

The date today was July 24, which is Pioneer Day, a Utah state holiday commemorating the day in 1847 that the Mormons came to Salt Lake Valley and decided "this is the place", thus giving us Pioneer Day and the largest parade in the United States. Us gentiles celebrate Pie 'n' Beer day instead.

No horse and wagon delivering fresh kegs and hot apple pie, but we did have Kenny and Heather, who carried Hostess fruit pies for all of us for the past 3 days without smashing them. Who needs covered wagons when you have friends like this.

And then, as we sat enjoying the epitome of after trail deliciousness, the puffy white clouds decided to play chameleon and treat us to the most unusual blast of color.

A spectacular rainbow cloud, or, as we called it, the amazing rain-blob. More precisely, this is cloud iridescence, but none of us had seen such a colorful cloud surrounded by regular clouds. The coincidence of us all sitting at the edge of of the basin, enjoying the post-ride glow and snacks instead of this cloud happening half an hour earlier or later when we would have been riding or getting busy with tasks made us feel like the most special bikers on earth at that particular moment.

Our luck manifested itself minutes later when the sprinkles started. Then full fledged rain that lasted all... night... long. If we had loitered at the reservoir for another half hour or took more pictures and breaks throughout the day, we would have been caught out in the famous mud of Dry Creek Basin. As it was, we just hunkered down, spacing our trips to the toilet as far apart as we each could because going meant a hazardous slip-slide-y walk in which you chanced falling face-first into tan slime and a mandatory 5-minute shoe-cleaning session upon your return.

Massive Mud Foot. photo by Karl

First we napped in the hut (or if you are me and think it is too stuffy in the hut, just took shelter under the hut in a sling chair), then ate yummy spaghetti and garlic toast, and, for the evening's main event, painted tiny acrylic renditions of our favorite scenes from the last three days. Yes, that's right, we had a Paint Night Party at the hut. Karl had carried 5x7 canvases for each of us, plus 4 or 5 tubes of acrylic paints with him for the last three days. First pies, now art. I have generous friends.