Riding the Passes around Ouray, Co., 7/29 - 8/3

kubotamiketx said:

I am running tubeless on the AT, but it is so freaking heavy compared to the Husky that I couldn't drop the pressure down. Perhaps on the rear I will try when we are up there, but I would never drop the front very much. It crunched a couple of time that I know would have pinch flatted if it wasn't tubeless.

The TCK80 front lasts forever, but the rear was really worn and chewed up. I think it was only two hard days before it was shot, but it still held up another day for some easier stuff.

This time I have the Mitas E07 front and rear, curious to see how they do up there. Think I will try 28 in the front, 24 in the rear...

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Hmmm, I ride a 1090R and a 1290 SA-T and have aired down the tires without any issues. When I had my 950SE (tube type) I aired down to 14psi with out any rim pinch issues.

William Wolfen said:

I was up there last weekend. Roads were open, views were great, and my DR ran with just an idle speed adjustment up to 12,500'. I, on the other hand, got terrible altitude sickness and had to run back down the mountains in the middle of the night. I hope none of you become so afflicted. I'm just now starting to feel normal again.

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I have read that doctors really don't know what causes one person to get altitude sickness versus another person. I have seen people that were in top physical shape have issues and people that were in horrible physical shape be just fine I've never actually gotten sick, but I have had spots appear in my vision and felt my arms and face tingling. That was on my first trip out there and only at 12K+ elevations. I've been out there 4-5 times since then and have never had any further issues. Staying WELL hydrated seems to help me, especially with avoiding headaches.

Few years back we were riding out of woodland Park and one of the crew got mountain sick the day he got there. He spent the next three days running back to Pueblo hospital getting iv hydrated. Ruined his whole doggone trip up there. Course the rest of us sitting around howling about the awesome trails we'd ridden each day probably didn't help his affliction.

Tourmeister said:

I have read that doctors really don't know what causes one person to get altitude sickness versus another person. I have seen people that were in top physical shape have issues and people that were in horrible physical shape be just fine I've never actually gotten sick, but I have had spots appear in my vision and felt my arms and face tingling. That was on my first trip out there and only at 12K+ elevations. I've been out there 4-5 times since then and have never had any further issues. Staying WELL hydrated seems to help me, especially with avoiding headaches.

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My son has a blood disorder and used to get altitude sickness very badly. His pediatrician she prescribed a diaretic to cause him to urinate a bit more and flush his system / be thirsty. He'd start taking it a couple days before the trip and through the first day he arrived.

It totally stopped the altitude sickness. We went every year when the kids were young and it went from 1-2 days of him being sick to no sickness at all.

I don't know the science behind it but it has something to do with the PH level of your blood and the amount of water you process through your body affects that somehow. Anyway.... lack of hydration isn't really the problem, but drinking a lot of water somehow causes the solution.

Anyway.... regardless of the science, I agree that drinking more water than normal helps a lot and it's better if you start a day or two before you go.

Oh...and as a related PSA.... don't sleep with your contacts in at altitude with dry air, you'll awake with your eyes killing you and it feeling like you have hard pieces of plastic stuck to your eyeballs.

Tourmeister said:

I have read that doctors really don't know what causes one person to get altitude sickness versus another person. I have seen people that were in top physical shape have issues and people that were in horrible physical shape be just fine I've never actually gotten sick, but I have had spots appear in my vision and felt my arms and face tingling. That was on my first trip out there and only at 12K+ elevations. I've been out there 4-5 times since then and have never had any further issues. Staying WELL hydrated seems to help me, especially with avoiding headaches.

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2WheelNut said:

My son has a blood disorder and used to get altitude sickness very badly. His pediatrician she prescribed a diaretic to cause him to urinate a bit more and flush his system / be thirsty. He'd start taking it a couple days before the trip and through the first day he arrived.

It totally stopped the altitude sickness. We went every year when the kids were young and it went from 1-2 days of him being sick to no sickness at all.

I don't know the science behind it but it has something to do with the PH level of your blood and the amount of water you process through your body affects that somehow. Anyway.... lack of hydration isn't really the problem, but drinking a lot of water somehow causes the solution.

Anyway.... regardless of the science, I agree that drinking more water than normal helps a lot and it's better if you start a day or two before you go.

Oh...and as a related PSA.... don't sleep with your contacts in at altitude with dry air, you'll awake with your eyes killing you and it feeling like you have hard pieces of plastic stuck to your eyeballs.

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Yeah, I've got no idea. I have experience with altitude flying, but not for extended time periods like that. It took several hours to get i. I'm a heavy drinker normally, but had backed off the day before for the long drive. It helps cover ground when you're not stopping to pee all the time. I'll certainly look into potential solutions before trying another trip. Probably going to be a while though.

Hope y'all enjoy it and I really hope no one else is so afflicted.

William Wolfen said:

I'm a heavy drinker normally,...

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Tourmeister said:

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Hah! Not like that. I've never been much for alcohol. Just seem to be a big drinker. Lots of water, tea, and koolaid. I've been pretty successful at getting away from soda lately.

At what altitude does it seem to kick in?

Jarrett said:

At what altitude does it seem to kick in?

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Hard to say. I spent the night in Albuquerque at about 5k with no issue. 6 hours later I was in camp outside Silverton at 9500, then a couple hours later I spent half an hour at 12k. Came back down and got sick. Not sure if it was the 9500 for hours or the brief excursion to 12k. Probably some of both.

My wife, mother in law and myself have gone to Durango / Purgatory for several years now and nobody has every experienced even a small issue from the altitude.

Purgatory's base is 8,700 feet, so it is up in the zone things can be a problem. Mom is 93 and even she hasn't had a negitive experence.

A million years ago a group of us would hike up Mt Whitney every year and you never knew who would get sick. There was no rhyme or reason, but for me I feel like over-hydrating on water keeping your salts balanced worked for me. Days ahead of time I started drinking much more than normal, that is what I have done for CO and so far so good. "knock on wood"

The most frustrating thing for me is trying to sleep above 9,000 feet. My resperation slows so much that i find myself waking up gasping for air. Drives me nuts sometimes. Especially hiking, sometimes you just want a quick nap and just can't get more that a couple of minutes before gasping.

kubotamiketx said:

My wife, mother in law and myself have gone to Durango / Purgatory for several years now and nobody has every experienced even a small issue from the altitude.

Purgatory's base is 8,700 feet, so it is up in the zone things can be a problem. Mom is 93 and even she hasn't had a negitive experence.

A million years ago a group of us would hike up Mt Whitney every year and you never knew who would get sick. There was no rhyme or reason, but for me I feel like over-hydrating on water keeping your salts balanced worked for me. Days ahead of time I started drinking much more than normal, that is what I have done for CO and so far so good. "knock on wood"

The most frustrating thing for me is trying to sleep above 9,000 feet. My resperation slows so much that i find myself waking up gasping for air. Drives me nuts sometimes. Especially hiking, sometimes you just want a quick nap and just can't get more that a couple of minutes before gasping.

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My first trip was only 4 years ago, after 4 days at around 10,000, I didn't feel like I could breathe. Loaded up and came home a day early. Up till then I had been fine. The next year stayed at around 8000 and had no problems.

woodsguy said:

My first trip was only 4 years ago, after 4 days at around 10,000, I didn't feel like I could breathe. Loaded up and came home a day early. Up till then I had been fine. The next year stayed at around 8000 and had no problems.

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I had the same issue. We camped at 9780ft and after 4 days, I'd wake up at night and it felt like a couldn't get a breath of air, but it only happened to me when I was asleep. Came back down below 8000ft and no longer had any issues !

Just to drive folks crazy, I have made some changes to the routes based on changes in road status now that the fires are no longer an issue. They are STILL not set in stone though I am trying to get feedback off AdvRider about the true nature of a few of the dirt roads.

1. For day 3, I have us doing Black Bear and Bolam Passes, along with some interesting side roads as we head back up US 550 to Ouray. I am unsure about the true nature of some of those side roads, whether they are trails or roads suitable for the small bikes. However, the only thing that would affect is whether we just run back up 550 without doing the side routes. It just makes for a slightly shorter route.

2. For day 6, I have us doing the Uncompahgre Divide Road. In City Navigator, it shows just the Divide part (the dirt) as being 96.4 miles with a travel time of 10-1/2 hours, meaning an average speed of around 9 mph!! I am thinking that cannot be right because someone on Adv mentioned that it was not a hard road and was suitable for the big bikes. Ideally, it should take 4-5 hours, running an average of 20-25 mph, leaving 3-4 hours to ride the remaining 190 miles of the route, which is all fast highway. So if we leave at 9:00am, we should be back to the hotel by 5-6pm, maybe 7 if we do a long lunch and stop a lot along the way. I've tried to cut this route a bit shorter, but there really isn't a good way to do that without making it not worth doing. I've been trying to get out there to ride the Divide road since my first trip out to Colorado back in 2000. So this is still up in the air...

Right click here and Save As for the most up to date GPX route file.

The link for the route file is also in the very first post in this thread. Any time I update it, the link will stay the same. So if you grab the file Thursday evening or Friday morning before leaving, it will likely be the final version. If I do make any more changes, I will also post up here to let you know.

Scott, I have the Garmin 24K topo maps for CO, it shows great detail in Basecamp. If you want I could send you a goto meeting so you can see or even drive my computer to view the routes with more detail. I will have my laptop too, so we can adjust once we are there too. Let me know if that would be of use.

Oh, I was so proud of myself, trying to get ahead of the curve, I just packed up all of my electronics today including the Garmin (with all the tracks loaded). Now I need to hook it up and load the new versions of your tracks

Once I leave the house, there really shouldn't be any need to make any major route adjustments unless we encounter something major like a closed road. In that case, we'll just reroute on the fly.

As for detail, I have Topo maps, City Nav 2015 & 2012, and I also import the tracks into GoogleEarth so I can what the terrain is like. It also does a nice elevation profile of the whole route. I often use GoogleEarth when trying to create routes through areas where I have never been, just to get an idea how well traveled, or not, a road may be. Lastly, because I am old school, I have the De Lorme Atlas & Gazetteer topo maps for Colorado (but I don't carry them on the bike).

I save these to my GPS as GPX files instead of Garmin routes. Then, for each day, I just load the track and set it to "show on map". That way I have the base route line showing on the map no matter what. If I need to do some on the fly routing that takes us off the preplanned route, I can do that without it doing anything to my base route. I have set the gpx track file for the big bike days to blue, the small bike days to red, and the ALT sections to yellow. They should show up against the GPS map fairly well. Of course, if folks want turn by turn directions, they can use BaseCamp to convert the tracks back to routes, but if you have a different map than what I used, they may or may not generate a route that follows the track.

You have my head spinning, lol. I wish I could plan like that!

wildernessrider said:

Oh is this ever tempting! I would love to ride Colorado again, and would love to ride with all you guys too. You never know, I may just show up for roll call one morning. So day one is small bike and then it alternates daily from there huh. Decisions decisions...

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Donny it's way too hot to be working in those woods right now. Throw something in the back of your truck and head for the mountains. We'll find amusement up there and swap some tales.

I am getting excited about the trip! Supposed to be 109 here in Austin today and its only going to get to 80 in Ouray! Wish I were there right now

woodsguy said:

You have my head spinning, lol. I wish I could plan like that!

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It's not hard

I create the routes in BaseCamp. If there are questionable roads, I check GoogleEarth and usually post up a thread in the appropriate regional forum on AdvRider in hopes of getting local knowledge or feedback from someone that has been out there recently. If those fail, I might do a search to see if there are any local riding clubs/forums I can visit. Worst case, I have even been known to call a local chamber of commerce for nearby towns and ask if they can recommend someone that might be able to clue me in about particular roads, and that has helped also with places to stay. I've already received some good feedback on Adv about some roads I posted about last night.

Once I have a route created, I usually convert it to a GPX track in BaseCamp. I find the track easier to use on the GPS, especially if everyone is not going to be using the exact same version of maps on their GPS units. If the maps are different other people can get really wonky results when they try to get the route to load on their GPS.

BaseCamp actually has an option for viewing the tracks in Google Earth. When you select the tracks you want to view, you pick that option and it automatically imports them into Google Earth. Then you can play around with them in there. This really helps get a better idea of the kind of terrain you'll be dealing with.

Scott, I have 1% the time in BaseCamp that you do which allows me to say "Thank You" for the tracks! I know how much time they take to produce.

Dont take this the wrong way, but lets quit talking about riding and just go riding !!!

Sorry, getting excited.

In a last minute attempt to get some kind of conditioning I started doing hikes in the Greenbelt and last Friday I hyper extended my right knee which made a mild pop and hurt like heck, but it is healing up nicely. I ordered a Leatt knee brace to help prevent me from doing that again. Should be here Wednesday, will be interesting to see what it is like.

I tore my left ACL in my mid 20's and never had that repaired but i have had two surgries to work on the meniscus, so the brace should help a little bit for the right knee too.

Following this thread with great interest as I’ll be in the same area on the same dates, but likely spinning four wheels instead of just two for this trip. Doing some Jeep / LandCruiser exploration based out of Purgatory with some buddies. I’ll keep an eye out for TWT riders on the trails & roads and will hope to swap stories with y’all over a frosty at a local pub one evening. Wish I could bring a bike along, too, but at this point I’m just looking forward to getting out of the furnace fan that is Central Texas right now!

Happy trails & mountain ales,
BW

When I use basecamp there are times it just doesn’t work. For example I have an iMac and when I pull 316 near Ouray and try to run 26/26a over Imogene pass towards Telluride the road dead ends. I’m pretty sure the road goes all the way to Telluride.

woodsguy said:

You have my head spinning, lol. I wish I could plan like that!

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It's really quite simple, you just follow Scott...




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jredford said:

When I use basecamp there are times it just doesn’t work. For example I have an iMac and when I pull 316 near Ouray and try to run 26/26a over Imogene pass towards Telluride the road dead ends. I’m pretty sure the road goes all the way to Telluride.

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Yeah, the maps will sometimes have small "gaps" between to sections of roads, making it look like both dead end just short of each other. I can look on Google Earth and clearly see that there is no gap and it is one continuous road, but Basecamp will REFUSE to route over that gap to continue a route. It can be a HUGE pain. Eventually, what I will do is create a route up to the gap and save it. Then I will manually lay a track across the gap. Then I start a new route on the far side of the gap. Eventually, I convert the two route files to tracks and I end up with three separate track files for the whole route. I then use Basecamp to join the three tracks into one and save that for use on the GPS. This is yet another reason why I use tracks on the GPS instead of route files. That would not work with route files and the GPS would be very confused. Some people just REALLY like the turn by turn instructions, which you don't get when using the tracks. Although, I do think there is an option on my Montana 600 that lets you navigate a track, which basically means it tries to treat it as a route file. But that will blow up if there are gaps that were manually crossed in the track as I describe above.

I have the Open Streets Map loaded on my Basecamp here at my office. It works fine. I am pretty sure you can download the same maps for Macs.

More info here:
http://www.twtex.com/forums/showthread.php?t=117172

Once again, thank you for the hard work!

Scott, earlier you brought up a great point about tracks vs routes. When I was in Utah a month ago I mistakenly loaded up routes to my Garmin Montana instead of tracks and soon as I was on the road and selected the route I was totally confused. Where the Montana kept trying to send me made no sense at all until I realized my mistake.

That first ride was less than productive. That night back at the hotel I had to delete the routes and install the tracks, the next day was much more fun and less stressful.