Two Lanes, Two Wheels, and a Camera: Cottonwood Pass, CO
A spectacular ride over the top of the Rockies… Car-B-Que and all.
The ride from Cortez, CO to Gunnison was spectacular… and wet. Rain greeted the first twist of the throttle and was an occasional and unwanted passenger for the first two hours.
I would stop and put on raingear for 20 minutes of torrential, “I’ll wipe you off the road” kind of rain, then stop and take it off for 20 minutes of “don’t let this sunshine fool you kid, you’re in MY mountains and your gonna pay” kind of respite.
If there can be any kind of respite when riding a big motorcycle on wet and very slick roads with canyons on either and sometimes both sides of the road.
I stopped in Telluride for a few minutes but felt like a bottle of beer in an imported Champagne bar. Jeezzz… the level of non-sensical grandiosity in a little town in the mountains floors me sometimes. I wanted a sandwich, but when confronted by a menu with nothing but inconceivable foods on it, I politely demur.
I would have chosen pizza, but with arugula, sun-dried tomatoes from France, and “just a pinch of Chamuska” I decided to wait a bit… maybe Ridgeway.
I grabbed a couple of dollars worth of gas and headed to my next stop, Gunnison.
Gunnison is a smallish town with lots of “outdoors” shops and hiking apparel stores. It has the basics of what a good town should have: mechanics, a couple of motorcycle shops, and great restaurants.
Biscuits and gravy restaurants.
Tacos and burritos restaurants.
Steak and veggie kinds of restaurants.
After a well-made, spicy enough taco or three, I fired up the bike and headed north toward the town of Crested Butte. About halfway to CB, I would get to a tourist and camper heaven crossroads, Three Rivers Resort and Dining facility, or should I say ‘small town’. This place is amazing!
If you want to take the family somewhere not too remote, but offering some absolutely wild experiences, check those guys out. I was not hungry at all, but the smell of the restaurant made me rethink my previous culinary decision.
This little bit of asphalt heaven is highway 742. It runs from Three Rivers east to Taylor Park Reservoir — another incredible outdoor playground for fishing, hiking, and scooting around on those speedy little desert vehicles everyone’s mother complains are too dangerous.
From there you make a quick right turn onto highway 209 — watch out for the inevitable gravel and silty dirt in this area… a grave combination that will drop the bike to the ground faster than you can say “oh… shit…” — trust me.
Up until the summer of my ride (2020), the Cottonwood Pass road, 209, had been dirt. And dirt roads have a very bad attitude toward big highway cruiser motorcycles. Bad. Downright disrespectful and maybe even hostile.
For the previous two summers it was closed for construction and they paved that bad boy all brand new and shiny. The road was spectacular. No cracks, bumps, potholes… nothing. A virgin passage of pure black, and ready for me to see what’s up, up there.
Way up there.
12,126 feet of super-thin air, ‘no hiking for you desert dwellers’, heart-stopping elevation up there.
The map from Taylor Park Reservoir.
The road begins to climb a few miles east of the lake, and then, immediately here come the turns. A few tight hairpins, lots of sweeping curves, and always on the incline. The road was so new that it almost seemed glossy which made it easy to see roadside gravel from the recent construction. Some of that gravel had gotten inadvertently spread across the curves by previous tourists too enamored with the scenery to stay on the road, and that made for a couple of really hairy turns.
Gravel. Cruiser motorcycle. Road tires. Slippery as snot on a peeled onion.
I won’t spoil it for you should you want to go, but the last two miles are incredible, and you better pay attention.
Failure — is not an option.
I spent about an hour on the top. I knew I had plenty of time to get to Leadville before dark. That was my prime directive of sorts… arrive before dark.
Now look, I love to ride a motorcycle. I love to ride the twisties, go places I haven’t been before, and even — on rare occasions — tackle a dirt road or two.
But I hate riding at night. I just do.
Cars worry me. I know most people are pretty good drivers, but there’s always the assholes (looking at you, ‘California Grrlz’ in the purple jeep barreling down the Great Basin National Park road taking selfies… in my goddamn lane), and you have to watch for them like a hawk. Every moment you ride. It can be exhausting.
It’s deer that scare the pants off of me, although I am in enough control of myself to make sure I never take my pants off when I am riding and deer are present. They are fast little devils and are so stupid that they will wait until you are right next to them and jump right into you. And nobody wants to see me pantless. I know this. I am OK with it.
Deer vs Motorcycle: Deer usually wins.
It’s like the whole purpose of a deer’s life is to jump in front of a moving vehicle… even if the rider doesn’t eat venison.
So with plenty of time to ride, I headed off to go down the east side of the mountains into the beautiful little town of Buena Vista, get some gas, and then get on up to Leadville to spend the night in a historic old hotel.
Sounds great, right. Simple.
The Car-B-Que.
About two or three miles down the traffic stopped. I waited for it to clear for a few minutes and then shut the bike down. After about 15 minutes we all realized that there was no oncoming traffic either.
That’s when someone from below came back to tell us that there was a camper truck on fire about two miles from us, and they were very concerned because the driver had 6 containers of Propane and a couple of thousand rounds of ammunition in the camper.
WTF!!!!!
That’s when the brain kicks in and starts wondering about — you know- forest fires and such. Were they panicking? Were they clearing out the entire eastern side of the mountain totally forgetting about us east-bound westerners? Were the deer about to mass and come and jump on our vehicles since we were parked and were literally sitting ducks for their weird vehicle jumping obsession?
No. We just had to wait it out.
Slowly the sun moved behind the huge mountain and we were in the shadows. And the temperature began falling. At 9000 feet, even in the summer, it was getting downright chilly.
A group of young people returning from a weekend of camping was directly in front of me and they decided to not let the downtime get in their way of having fun. They were a blast, and we had a pretty good conversation about their goals and aspirations. Good, solid, grounded kids who knew what they wanted to do.
The temperature kept dropping as the sun was setting way beyond us to the west. It was at this point I knew I was not going to make it to Leadville with sunlight. In fact, I wouldn’t even make it to Buena Vista, a good 45 miles south of Leadville. And since Leadville sits at an elevation of 10,151 feet, it was going to be cold. Colder than I had dressed for and so I would have to stop and unpack my cold gear if I didn’t want to shiver like my Chihuahua when I bring him a cold hot dog.
Finally, we started moving again, and we slowly crawled down the mountain like a caravan of Fire Ants toward Buena Vista. No photographs from that part of the ride. It was no moon, cloudy skies, darker than dark, dark.
As we slowly wound around the car-b-que, we could smell the burned rubber, metal, and wood. There was smoke and steam and it was a shame seeing the elderly couple sitting there looking at what was going to be a grand road trip together just smoldering on the road. The driver, knowing what was happening, found a very wide spot in the road and parked the camper in the middle of it instead of pulling off near trees and dried brush.
That probably saved a couple of thousand acres of too dry pine and a brand spanking new road.
I decided to not change gear but to tough it out and just be cold for the next hour or so. Still debating if that was a good or bad idea. Maybe I was too cold to decide clearly… yeah, we’ll go with that.
I rode in perpetual knowledge that there were at least 11,478 deer standing in the dark on the side of the road waiting to ambush me but eventually giving me a pass because who wants to jump in front of a guy who is already shivering from the cold. That just takes the fun out of it, you know.
I got to Leadville in good time and was damn ready to warm up in the beautiful and historical Delaware Hotel. The place is righteously decorated as it must have been 100 years ago. A big, and welcoming lobby adorned with a dark. polished wood, luxurious chairs. You could almost hear Doc Holiday asking for another card in the parlor, and smell the cigars and whiskey that would adorn that poker table.
A very pleasant check-in person who went out of her way to make sure I could get warm as fast as possible got me an extra blanket and had it sent up to my room.
I recommend the Delaware Hotel to anyone who is looking for charm, history, and a sense of the grandeur of yesteryear as long as you remember that it has small, really small rooms. I guess folks from the 1920s were tiny little folks who needed nothing but a bed.
And I am happy to join their last millennia minimalism and just chill — err — warm in that charming space.
Most food joints had closed down. I was traveling in October and that is past ‘season’ so I had to settle for a small pizza delivered to the room. Every other meal on the trip was tacos, but this night, the shivering, cold, triumphantly deer crashless night, had to be pizza.
With pepperoni and sausage on it.
Hold the arugula.
