Durango day 3- Horse Gulch

After yesterday’s little sojourn on the Colorado Trail I was thinking of doing more of the same, with even more climbing. Maybe if I was here for pure fun that’d be OK, but I needed to be reminded that I had a race coming up. My instructions from Coach  were  “something a little more flowy and fun today with not quite as much climbing … let your body recover and also adapt at a cellular level”.

Hmm, what to do. Telegraph Hill had been recommended by a few folks, and it seemed to fit the “not much climbing / flowy trail” profile, so off I went to the Horse Gulch trail system.

I still wanted a reasonable time in the saddle so had enough liquid for up to 5 hours. I met a couple of locals close to the trailhead and they recommended heading up Telegraph Hill then hitting the trails on the far side, before coming back & doing the rest of the system.

Telegraph Hill is a nice easy climb, nothing technical, which fit the bill perfectly. Once at the top, I stopped for a brief photo stop.

Hmm, I wonder why they call it Telegraph Hill?

Now it’s time to explore the “far-side” trails. From Telegraph I headed down Sidewinder to Cowboy. Damn, that’s some fast flowy trail. Way too much fun (not). Out of the saddle, stupidly fast, throwing the bike around the smooth trails. On the flat sections I gunned it in the big-ring to maintain momentum. At this speed, maintaining focus is critical, so I put on my best serious-scowl-of-concentration face. Inwardly I had a shit-grin though :)

The trails are really well marked with little white placards at major intersections. I had to laugh at one point, as a little uphill on Cowboy was marked as “rugged climb”. It was smooth as a baby’s and reminded me of the smooth steepish ascent on Rudy’s trail in Austin. Rugged is all relative. HaHa.

After so much downhill fun, I was expecting more climbing to get back than it actually felt. South Rim->Carbon Junction->Crites Connect was a pleasant climb with plenty of switchbacks and some smooth, short, flowy downhill sections. Now I was back to the top of Telegraph Hill and headed down to the “near-side” trails.

Despite the name, Anasazi Descent isn’t nearly as fun a downhill as Sidewinder /Cowboy. I was on the brakes most of the time, to the extent that I noticed some fade towards the base. At this point, my legs were feeling nicely “warmed-up” and I remembered Coach’s “not quite as much climbing” instructions. I didn’t want to head out just yet, so made my way towards Cuchillo thinking that it looked like a relatively flat trail. Nope. More climbing. Nothing major, but by this time I was definitely feeling it in my legs. No big deal for a regular ride, but I did have a bunch of real climbing to do on Saturday. The good news was that this climbing led to another “serious-scowl-of-concentration / inwardly shit-grin”  flowy downhill back to the Meadow Loop. Yee-frickin-haw!

All good things must come to an end & I finally headed back to the trailhead. I spun around on the road for a little while before calling it a day. The actual ride time was only about 3 hours, and I ended up with 24 miles and about 3,300ft of elevation gain. Fun stuff!