Durango – 7.09.08

Kennebec Pass loop is one of my all time favorite off road epics. Jesse and I got a shuttle up to Kennebec Café from his buddy Caleb. Shortly after 8 in the AM, we started our 14 mile ascent up to Kennebec Pass. The first two miles are blacktop, the next 7 or so miles is gravel and the remainder of the ride is rugged jeep road that reduced us to our granny gears on a couple of occasions. 105 minutes later we were overlooking the breath taking views from Kennebec Pass.


About 3/4 of the way up to Kennebec Pass



Jesse tryin' to figure out how to use his camera, the Notch is in the background and tops out at around 11,800.



The view from Kennebec Pass



Another view from Kennebec



Knucklehead


About another 500 feet up is the Notch, with even better views than Kennebec Pass. We sat around for about 15 minutes at the Notch, enjoyed the views, ate some food, watered some rocks and then headed back down to the Colorado Trailhead.


View from the Notch. I yelled and threw a water bottle at Jesse because he didn't pull through hard enough on the steepest part of the climb. He shoved my face into one of the snow banks above



Another view from the Notch



The road down from the Notch, the ride back down was real quick like.



View from the Notch to the east



Another view to the east


From that point it was 25 miles of sweet Colorado singletrack back down to Durango. This section of the Colorado is probably about 80% downhill and about 20% lung busting climbs, some of which were so steep that we had to do the walk of shame.


The Slide Rock trail, guaranteed to activate the 'pucker factor' everytime. If you put a wheel wrong, you'll look like raw hamburger by the time you finally stop rolling down the face of the mountain.



Granny gear / walk of shame climb


One of the many aspen / pine groves that contain some of Colorado's finest, buttery smooth singletrack.


We made it to the Colorado Trail trailhead in Durango, Jesse headed home, I turned around and rode back up to the Dry Fork / Hoffheins intersection and took Hoffheins down to the Dry Fork trailhead and then back to the cabin. Logged about 5 ½ hours of ride time and about 6,000 feet or so of climbing. Another great day in the saddle!