I awaken from a wonderful, warm, happy dream to the first rays of New
Mexico sunrise lighting my room. I really don't want to get up. I roll
over and try to sleep a while longer, but the sunlight brightens. In a
few hours, it will be beastly hot in the low country and full of
electrical storms in the high country. I drag myself out of bed, put
the coffee on, and start loading the bike onto the car. I'm out the
door shortly after, sipping java from a thermos and playing Courtney
Love on the stereo. I am headed to the high country.
The Aspen Vista trail, AKA Forest Road 150, is not so much a trail as
an access road to the microwave antennas at the top of Tesuque Peak in
the Santa Fe ski area. The appeal is the altitude: the trailhead is at
9800 feet, and the road climbs to an altitude of 12,000 feet over six
miles of switchbacks. I have only been at altitude for a week, and I am
honestly not sure I am going to be able to make the climb. I organize
myself in a very leisurely fashion at the trailhead, finishing my
coffee. I feel pretty good, but I haven't been getting enough sleep. It
would have been better if I could have slept until ten. I'm feeling
sorta wifty, and the altitude isn't helping.
As I get to the end of my coffee, an old Subaru pulls up not far away,
and a gorgeous woman gets out. Black curly hair, perfect olive skin,
lovely round breasts under a tight bike jersey, narrow hips, lean and
sinewy legs. She is obviously very fit. She's stunning. She cooly
stretches out behind her car as I try not to gawk. One of the things I
miss most about the West is the girls.
My coffee is gone, and I'm starting to stare, so I hoist my too-heavy
Camelbak on my shoulders and head up the trail. The first mile and a
half are the worst. There is no warmup on this trail: you just slog
right into high-altitude climbing. At sea level, my resting heart rate
is in the low fifties, but within a few hundred yards of the rather
moderate climb, it is fluttering like a hummingbird's. I adjust my pace
and my ambitions. I continue to ride. I find that all the fixie riding
I have been doing is paying off, because I have learned how to spin and
rest at the same time, so I can grab little bits of rest for my legs
and my heart as I climb. I manage to keep my pace and my metabolism
steady, and I find a good rhythm.
The trail is steep only for brief stretches, with longer, less-steep
sections in between, and I begin to figure out my limits, and manage to
find spaces to rest in between hundred-yard climbs which leave me
gasping for air. The first big switchback is at 11,000 feet, a little
under three miles in. I force as much of the thin air in and out of my
lungs as possible as I round the switchback, suffering. A few nice
hikers by the trailside say "you'll make it," to which I reply "Maybe."
Then the tamales become a problem. Yesterday I drove down to the
Trinity site for the 60th anniversary of the first atomic bomb test,
and stopped and had a fantastic New Mexican meal at a dive roadside
restaurant near Socorro. Good, spicy red sauce. Back in Santa Fe that
evening, I dined on some less spectacular, but still ok, tamales at a
Santa Fe restaurant, the kind that sells fifteen dollar hamburgers with
a straight face. More red sauce. All of that tasty food begins to wreak
its revenge on my intestinal tract, and I am now suffering in more
places than my lungs. I find that I have to stand and climb in order to
manage a clear fart, so my strategy becomes to grind up the steep
stretches, then stand and slowly spin on the flats, still in the
granny, and let off a few farts before I have to sit for the next steep
stretch. This becomes less and less tenable as the altitude increases,
and finally at around the five mile mark on the trail, right around
treeline, I attempt to stand and fart, only to get very light-headed,
and almost wreck. I sort of start wobbling around, gasping and farting
as my vision starts to fuzz out.
This, of course, is just when the girl from the trailhead catches up to
me. I think it best not to try to explain that I almost passed out when
I tried to fart. "I figured you would probably kick my ass," I say.
She smiles a radiant smile. Her teeth are very white. She is barely
breathing hard. She passes ahead of me, and I have the pleasure of
watching her gradually pull away from me up the hill as I climb. She
beats me to the top of the hill by a quarter mile or so, and I find her
standing at the peak, framed by a spectacular vista of snow-covered
peaks and clear mountain lakes below us. It must be the thin air
playing tricks on me, because she is almost glowing. The climb has
taken me about an hour and twenty minutes.
"Man," I say. "You're pretty good."
She shines another radiant smile, and I feel buoyant. "Now for the
reward," she says, and slides gracefully back down the hill and out of
sight. I linger and take a few pictures, then rock the long downhill.
My trusty Marzocchi is not feeling quite right, kind of harsh, and I
play a little with the rebound damping. I'm not getting the full travel
out of it, either. But the downhill is still a joy.
The beautiful girl is gone when I arrive at the trailhead. But she made
my day.
CC