I woke up in a place I didn’t recognize. That wasn’t too uncommon during the race, I’d usually go to bed exhausted, and wake up still exhausted in unfamiliar surroundings. This morning though, the darkness and the emptiness played tricks on me. I thought I bedded down in a flat-ish spot with some trees off in the distance. In reality the area was flat and empty, with no trees in sight. I still had about 30 miles to Wamsutter, and hoped to make it before it got too hot. I had also heard that this section was heavy with oil refinery traffic. I was hoping they had a late start today.
It wasn’t very long until I started seeing the trucks though. The road was wide and packed down from all the traffic, but it was still dusty and there were quite a few trucks even at 7am. This wasn’t a section I remember fondly, the traffic and the smell of oil and gas was nearly overwhelming at times. If I ever ride this again, my preference would be to finish this section before the traffic starts. The wind had started to pick up a bit, but wasn’t too bad as I finally made it in to Wamsutter.
Wamsutter is basically just a gas station stop on the interstate, with maybe a motel somewhere in ‘town’. I stopped to grab a sandwich and met a north bound racer. We chatted about the road ahead and behind. I’m sure he had met a few racers ahead of me. We talked briefly about the traffic jam at Brush Mountain, but it had long since cleared and the racers out front were well on their way to New Mexico by now.
I spent too much time at the gas station and got another sandwich to go. Packed, and with low motivation I headed out. The heat and the wind were both picking up, and it seemed like today might be the like what I dreaded yesterday would be.
I eventually caught up to Jackson, who I had met in Banff, but hadn’t really ridden with much throughout the race. We were riding along a very long straight section of rutted and washboarded gravel into the wind, and I was envying his front suspension more and more. Eventually I stopped to let a bit of air out of my tires to try and make the road a bit more bearable. It helped a little. Jackson kept going, and I didn’t have the motivation to try and push to keep up with him. It was hard enough with the heat and my malaise to keep going at a race pace.
I kept plowing along, stopping at a stream by the road to filter some water, also an excuse to get out of the wind and the heat. The next section took me up into an area that looked even more like the basin, but with some wild flowers sprinkled in. The route to Rawlins has a section like this, but you quickly climb and get into some wooded areas in the higher elevation. South of Wamsutter is more of the same as north.
Eventually I made to to what I assume is a main road after more stops, and seeing a rattle snake on the trail, and a call to my wife after I unexpectedly had signal on the top of a hill. This main road was wide, and rutted like most of the others today, but was undulating with steep rolling hills. These were some of the steepest I think I’ve ever encountered on a road like this, and tall too. I’d ride to the top of one hoping for a nice downhill to gain speed and quickly climb the next, but it seemed like the downhill wasn’t steep enough, or long enough to make it up the next one without significant effort. I had to push up a couple of sections, which wasn’t helping my motivation.
Finally making it to the Colorado border, on pavement no less, I started looking forward to Brush Mountain Lodge. I figured I could make it by sundown and that could be my destination for the night. I still had a thought that maybe I’d push a bit down the road before camping, but once I got to the lodge any thought of that was quickly pushed out of my mind. I shared a cabin with Jackson, who had arrived a bit earlier, and tried to remember why I was racing, when this hospitality and comfort felt so nice.
