Sargents to Buffalo Camp 8/8 42 miles

Well, we dragged Silas out for another ride of 18 miles, and I have to admit, it wasn't one of anyone's favorites.  Lots of rolling grazing land over 1000ft of climbing.  Pretty but not exciting enough for sure. With several talks along the way about how not everything in life is going to be great, there are always going to tough spots to get through, keep your spirits up, it's bound to get better and so on and so forth, we happily dropped him off with Sarah and Rocky, and continued our ride along some similar landscape and past a few reservoirs, before we started our climb up to Cochetopa Pass and the 17th Continental Divide crossing.  We were a little nervous at the start of this part of the climb because there was a sign stating that the road was closed ahead.  I figured we could get through almost anything at this point, but Daren remained extremely nervous.  We continued our 3 mile climb up to the pass, Daren so quiet the whole time.  No signs of road closure, although there was only one car track on the dirt and it was otherwise flawless.  Usually the roads are well tracked by 4 wheelers etc. but not this one.  I wasn't worried.  And then we reached the pass at 10,067ft.  There were some people camped at the top, Daren asked if they knew of any closures, they hadn't, so we continued on.  And then it happened, a MOOSE!! was crossing the road in front of us as we started our descent.  We skidded to a halt as the moose was walking across the road to get to a small pond in a meadow.  He/she stopped just before some trees past the road and just stood there not moving for 10 minutes.  Daren got out both bear sprays and warned me to get out of sight.  He told me a story about a moose that had chased him while he was driving his car past it on a dirt road in Montana, literally chasing him.  I sensed that this was a gentle moose, which Daren thought was a load of you know what!  For some reason, the moose went back across the road, away from the pond.  We decided to ride down, "as fast as you can", Daren said past the moose, but as soon as we got close, he wondered back out.  Another skid stop and we turned right back around and headed up to where we started this fun.  I thought it would be a good idea to cut a bee line through the woods/meadow with our bikes, 90 degrees away from where the moose was.  We did this, all the while, my legs felt like lead while we were running.  We passed the pond worried that the moose might chase us, but he never did.  I knew he was gentle!
We rode down a beautiful canyon of huge rock formations and aspens down to the pick up point with Sarah.  We drove a short way to a forest service campground in the Rio Grande Forest, and had a relaxing night with deraillers to calm us.







more pics here