Day 2: Last Dollar Hut to Spring Creek Hut
We left at 10 am after a hearty breakfast and returned to the saddle by a different and easier route through the pine trees. Then began a four-mile descent on a rocky forest trail into Alder Creek.
Within twenty minutes we had descended from pine forests to meadows, oak and aspen. We continued for miles along a dirt track that was still Last Dollar Road and passed an old ranch which figured in the John Wayne movie "True Grit". Many fields were blooming with sunflowers and it was idyllic cycling along relatively flat terrain surrounded on all sides by snow-capped peaks in the distance.
Eventually, after several miles, we had to descend onto busy Highway 62 for three miles that were windy, noisy and unpleasant - but at least it was downhill.
Not so the next four miles as we climbed up Buck Canyon. It was during this climb that Jessica fell because her clips wouldn't come out of her pedals, and she suffered some cuts and bruises. Whereupon Bitsy, in sympathy, also keeled over gracefully as she was attempting to set off again. Needless to say, I had decided that walking was most definitely the best option at this stage and at this gradient given the rate of minor accidents. Soon we were out in the open again and on flatter terrain where we stopped for lunch in the welcome shade of a tree.
The climbing, however, was not over for the day - there was 1,600 feet of it in all, and our last couple of miles up to Divide Road took our breath away again. Spring Creek Hut was hiding in aspen woods and bore a remarkable resemblance to Last Dollar Hut in its dark green color and by-now-familiar structure. Moreover, we discovered that the two food cabinets housed more
or less the same wide variety of foodstuffs - still there was plenty to choose from and we weren't disappointed.
Having settled in, scouted out the infamous crapper barrel and assessed the food situation, Rob and I took a delightful walk in the aspen woods and were met by a couple on motorbikes who informed us they'd just seen a mountain lion crossing the trail.
Rob claims to have seen it bounding across a meadow earlier but we are not convinced that he didn't see a deer. Anyway, we never spotted it again - not even Bitsy, who went off alone to commune with the aforementioned mountain lion in her Dr Doolittle (she's a vet) manner, had any luck. Paul and Mike yet again turned up trumps by producing enchiladas with turkey, with green chili sauce and fresh potatoes. For those amongst us who needed to eat still more (no names mentioned), Velveeta (American processed cheese in a brick-shaped block) quesadillas bunged up every possible empty spot in the stomach and further down the intestinal tract.
