Two weeks ago I wanted one last adventure before heading to Maine for Thanksgiving. I had gotten a new bag for my bike and hadn’t had a chance to try it out yet, so a bike packing adventure was in order. Small snow storms had made everything up high on the Forest impossible on bike and not yet possible on skis, so a desert adventure was in order. I knew people who had biked the Yampa Bench, so I thought that would be a good destination. I packed up my stuff, trying to manage to get our smallest tent somehow strapped to my bike and camelpack, but eventually gave up and went with the usual tarp setup. Hopefully it wouldn’t be too cold! Maybe this time Ida would learn how to sleep under a coat and on her ridgerest. And maybe pigs will fly.
On previous adventures, I had been to the western end of the Yampa Bench, when going down to Echo Park, so this time I wanted to explore from the Eastern end. We packed the car and headed for Colorado. When we got to the dirt road that leads towards the Monument, it became apparent that the car was the wrong vehicle of choice. So I tried a different road in, getting turned around at that point as well. Time for the backup plan. In my internet searching on biking the Yampa, I had run across the mention of some people biking down Disappointment draw, so we headed to the eastern most entrance of Dinosaur and loaded up the bike and headed out. Disappointment Draw could have been named by a mountain biker, as it wasn’t very good biking. The scenery was nice though. My original plan was to bike up Disappointment Draw, hit BLM land and continue through until we hit the road we would have been driving on to get to the Yampa Bench. Then take this road for a short ways, until hitting another 2 track that cut back down a parallel canyon to Disappointment. 4 miles later, which took over 2 hours, I decided that plan wasn’t going to work. The biking just wasn’t going very quickly. And, I wasn’t even sure if the other 2 track through the parallel canyon would be ridable. I’d checked out the part where we would finish, but there was about 6 miles that could or could not suck. Since I’d gotten such a late start, at this point it was pretty much dark out (thank you time change), and I decided we would just camp at the first nice spot I found. Somewhere on BLM land….
There was a sandy wash that had a nice flat spot next to some junipers that, with the bike, would make an easy setup for the tarp. I set up camp and Ida proceded to sniff around and find cow poop to eat. Apparently she found something more delicious than cow poop, because when she came back to see me she had dug something until her nose was bleeding. MMM, yum, dead things.
Dinner was curry couscous and dog food for Ida. While I was eating, she curled up on top of my sleeping bag and mattress, and was rather disgruntled when I insisted she us her own. Still working on this camping when it is cold thing with her.
The down bag and the bivy sack kept me warm all night, even when the wind picked up. There was a coating of sand over most everything when I woke. Packed up while having breakfast and made the executive decision to go back the way I had come. It started flurrying shortly thereafter. One highlight of the ride back out was finding an elk antler! While strapping it to my bike didn’t really help with the handling on the front end, it did make me think of the Grinch that stole Christmas. The trip back to the car went much faster due to the downhill factor and I didn’t have to route find. We stopped to check out a couple other neat looking areas and then headed back to Vernal. Small bikepacking adventure complete. The new bike bag worked great. Now for more successful bike packing adventures where the biking is better!
