Tuesday, August 01, 2006

Pretty in Policarpio


   A while ago a guy who was checking out my blog commented on a killer ride up near Taos near Sipapu. A couple emails back and forth and he Emailed me the trail info.( Thanks Tim) I finally found a free Saturday and Todd and I decided to go give the ride a try. We packed up his truck and off we went up the high road. We went right by Santa Cruz Lake. I wouldn't mind camping there soon. Soon we arrived at La Junta Canyon. We parked and dressed in our MTB attire and proceeded to climb up La Junta Canyon. There lots of people camping out and ATVing it was weird but it seemed like all the campers were in very large groups (like 20 to a campsite) Weird. Any ways, the ride was a ripper but as usual let me show you some pics from the ride. Equal amounts Todd and Tim pics.

Just getting started up the canyon

This is where the trail gets more traily

A couple of Todd on the climb. The trail got really rocky later on. Some fun stuff you had to keep the cadence on.


Todd coming into one of many beautiful meadows we would roll through this day.


Me in same meadow





This was a killer area with cattle included. We made a wrong turn here but corrected ourselves quickly once I took a leak.



After looking at the map again we saw that we needed to go along the trees on the left side of this picture there is a really faint 2 track
.

Todd on that faint 2 track

JRA with a cool cabin in the distance. This whacky guy was living in there.

Here he is eyeing us up. making sure we don't leave any GU wrappers.

I got him to take a pic of me with my RIG. I think he had a digital SLR.

So we bid him adieu and were on our way.



Not before waving to some hikers and kicking there dogs (JK).



Then we got to Romero Lake above the cabin.

After the lake things got sketchy and we came into this SSweet meadow and didn't know what to do.

some more free rangers

Todd made the decision to go along the Aspens on the other side of the meadow so we bushwhacked it across the meadow.





It was such a fine place I had to stop and give thanks.

I think I see a trail.

Ohh yeaa that is the trail

So we finally made it to the Policarpio trail.
This pretty much took us back down to La Junta Canyon then down to the truck.
This trail was a blast all the way down.








Cows are wondering what the hell I am.

They were not happy with me.


This was a really cool section with a lot of rocks and water.



As always....


Cooling our toes in Junta creek


   Well that about does it. It was a really good ride. Prolly one of my Favorites since I got here. I have still barely scratched the surface of Northern New Mexico. I really need to get to Durango and Crested Butte.
   So much to do so little time.
What is in your audio player? I had to bust out So Many Roads after reading Matts blog . Funny his latest blog has Cow content as well.
       Peace... I am popping a brew

4 comments:

Matt said...

Wow Tim you are an absolute hound dog for biking around here! I've never even heard of this place - and now I wanna go ride it. How long have you been here......and you've ridden stuff locals will never ride? Hey that's a good thing. :-)

riderx said...

Looks like a sweet ride. If you get to Crested Butte let me know and I'll give you the trail info from when we went last year. Beautiful riding out there.

YuriB said...

nice. that is one fine looking ride.

Tim said...

Sweet. I'm glad you finally made it up there. The shots of that old cabin bring back memories. I sat there and repaired a busted chain during a solo ride about 13 years ago. That ribbon of singletrack on the descent is world-class, for sure.