SPP Wilderness and 25 year old cat

Another Physics test on Monday morning meant no camping over the weekend. So I needed to study and stay local.

On the bright side I got invited to a birthday party for a 25 year old cat. Great excuse to buy a keg (tasty and refreshing), cook some green chili salmon burgers (outstanding), watch the sunset from the ridge they live on (outstanding again), watch the stars fill in the night sky (always great out here) and then John and Mary, the hosts, brought out their telescope. Clear view of Saturn, the rings, and the moons (I'll give that an awesome). Met some folks that live locally and got invited to a group ride Sunday morning, and the ride was followed up with brunch at someone's house. Score!! I now have people to ride with that know some good routes, and they like to eat chorizo and eggs and tortillas and green chilis after! They are mostly mountain bikers rather than roadies, and with the terrain here I am very interested in trying this new mountain bike fad.   

I also had a full day to do some exploring by myself on the road bike, and wanted to look at Rt 96 between the Jicarillo Apache Rez and the San Pedro Parks Wilderness. SPP is high alpine meadows, no significant peaks. I wanted to look for places to cycle in, or drive in and do some more backpacking. It will be a sweet spot to explore while waiting for deep snows to fade from higher elevations. My snowshoes are about 2800 miles (4500 Km) away from here.

Excellent riding, started off with about 18 miles of rolling hills with great views. No significant climbs. This is good as I am flatlander and suck a lot of wind trying to get over hills. I am hoping to learn to climb here, but it won't happen overnight.

No significant climbs is the goal for the day, so what happens? I start a sweet descent that runs about 2 miles, nice curves and not too steep. Turn around point is Coyote, NM, 5 more miles. 

Then I see the trucker sign that tells trucks that a steep descent is coming up. Then I see the steep descent "next 5 miles" sign. Uggh. Beautiful twisting descent, that goes on and on, zipping downhill minute after minute, and knowing the whole way that I have to turn around and climb back out. It took 50 minutes to climb back out. Grind. Yikes, that was hard work. And not even a significant climb for the roads here. Very different riding than back east.

Thumbs up on the route for cycling, and the SPP wilderness will be next on my backpacking list. Always check before a 7 mile descent if there is a tail wind, because that small tail wind going down is a rock wall going back up. Lata.