Dave set his alarm for 4:45 AM. When it went off, Dave woke up, turned off the alarm, looked around and saw that nobody was getting up, and then reset it for 5:00 AM. When it went off again at 5:00 AM, we started stirring and slowly started to get up.

It was still dark outside but by time time there was enough light to see, we were all packed up and ready to go. We hit the trail around 6:15 AM. Ryan and Brian had the trailers first as we started the ascent out of John Brown Canyon. Fortunately, the weather was nice and cool, and the canyon did a pretty good job of keeping the sun at bay for most of the morning.

Partway up, I took the trailer from Ryan. The weather was still nice and I was feeling pretty strong so I decided to try to go as far as possible without stopping to rest. The steepest climbs of the canyon were still to come so I certainly had a challenge ahead of me. I went surprisingly far, finding a steady pedal rhythm and just cranking up the hill. Judy wasn’t far behind me so it was looking like all our training was paying off!

After finally finishing our long and hard ascent, we continued along some rolling hills. Before too long, we were at the state line of Colorado and Utah – a major milestone! We rode on a ways further. I still had the trailer and decided that it was time to pass it on so I pulled over at the next suitable rest stop. When the rest of the group pulled up, the consensus was that everyone was pretty pooped, understandably so considering the amount of vertical feet we had climbed. The warm sun felt good and we were nearly ready to just plop down and take a nap in the middle of the road.

We took a longer rest than usual, basking in the warm sun, nibbling on some food, sipping on some drink, and enjoying the scenery. But alas, we had to move on before our muscles got too used to the rest. I transferred the trailer to Rob’s bike and we carried on.

We arrived at Hut #6 at around 12:30 PM. The hut was notable in that it was situated in an open space with no shade nearby. It was pretty warm inside the hut so we hung out in the limited shady area to one side of the hut. This was where the water jugs were stored so we fashioned the jugs into little seats.

It was kind of sad to know that this was our last hut and that our weeklong adventure was quickly coming to an end. We fell asleep with the knowledge that tomorrow, our last day, would likely be a fun one as we make our final 6,200 foot descent into Moab.

Cumulative miles: 167.44
Daily miles: 21.9
Mechanicals: None (Rob’s BB appeared to be A-OK)
Casualties: None

[Go to Day 7 trip report or go to pics.]

Posted by Roger at 9:04 PM.