The C-Team Beer League Mountain Biking on the Colorado Trail
From Taylor Boyd and the C-Team:
This film is an 88 percent accurate portrayal of the trip, what follows is the additional 12 percent of reality that didn’t make the 13 minutes and 15 seconds.
It took about a minute and half on the phone with Mark Taylor and Will Cadham, collectively the Free Radicals, to convince them to come. But it took a lot longer for the Canadian border to open, so they didn’t make it.
Tim Eddy is newish to mountain biking but he’s what you might call a multisport athlete, so we called him. Running on nothing but vegetables, Tim could probably podium at an XC race on Saturday, win an enduro on Sunday, while skating transition the rest of the week. But he has a snowboard career to attend to. We mentioned the idea to another snowboarder, and in classic Forrest Shearer fashion he barely acknowledged it in conversation then called two weeks out from departure asking to join. Few have figured out how to turn keeping it loose into a career like Forrest.
I talked to Evan Green a little more than a week before we were leaving, thinking it was a stretch, but he was quitting his job as a geologist to go all-in on shooting photos, so things really lined up there.
Aaron Mike is a climbing guide in Arizona with a spandex past. He didn’t have a mountain bike, but we bought one off Craigslist via Venmo. That was a tough one to explain to accounting.
Maybe you know Len Necefer for his Instagram presence or one of the boards he sits on. At the time, he was also a professor at the University of Arizona, which kept him from joining for the whole trip. He’s since quit that job.
Also because of school, Meghan Degnan couldn’t join for the whole trip, but her time with us was a reminder that you don’t need a brand new bike or fancy bags to go bikepacking. Just strap a sleeping bag to your bars, and the rest will sort itself.
This whole trip was Kody Kohlman’s idea. He sold me on the CT, I bought it, then signed seven more people onto our little scheme.
Josh Uhl also got roped into this as a videographer. What I don’t think any of us realized when we recruited Josh was how vital it would be to have someone who’d actually ridden the trail. There was a lot we didn’t realize.
Peter Hogan was the most rogue addition to this ragtag crew. The guy showed up in the Waterton parking lot on a singlespeed, loaded only with a frame bag, wearing jorts and a floral tee. His painted fingernails were the most meticulous part of his kit. Peter knew at most two other people on the trip and proceeded to “crush seggies”—his term—for the next 500 miles, fueled by candy and trap rap.
But Peter wasn’t the only one who hardly knew anyone on the trip. The C-Team was an awkward bunch at Waterton and a group of lifelong friends in Durango. We had more than 500 miles and 70,000 feet of vertical to get acquainted.
The night before we left, most people on the trip were in my garage outside Nederland putting bikepacking bags on for the first time ever. I bleached my hair, and when Mark and Will found out, they said they’d bleach theirs in solidarity if I rode every segment of the trail between Denver and Durango. They didn’t have to.
By the second morning, things were falling apart. An injury flared up and I winced with each pedal stroke. Kody couldn’t keep a sip of water down without throwing up. Against their own wishes, the crew left us in a literal ditch as Kody puked like clockwork on five-minute intervals. We had no service, and due to ‘Rona’s rampancy the idea of asking someone to let this visibly unwell duo into their vehicle was out of the question. Fortunately, a man probably in his sixties saw us in this state and sensed the desperation. Masks up and windows down, he shuttled us into Bailey and told us stories of his extensive international bike touring exploits. Safe to say this is the person everyone on this trip aspires to be one day.
Kody and I then got picked up on the side of 285 and driven to our planned Kenosha Pass campsite, as the rest of the group made their way there on bike to meet us. Except they didn’t. By dark, it had been downpouring for hours, and we knew something was wrong. Now separated, neither party had service, and our InReach messages weren’t being returned. I borrowed a vehicle and drove a half hour to make contact with the outside world. A text from Aaron came in: “Yo man! I couldn’t hang with the pace and decided it wouldn’t be good for the group’s safety. I caught a ride to Woodland Park and posted up at a motel here tonight.”
Now the group was split into three. I was able to check the SPOT tracker and saw the nucleus of the crew stationary at the Stagestop Saloon. Less than 48 hours in, and the plan was out the window, splintered, lying in a puddle. One thing was certain—the idea that nine mostly first-time bikepackers were going to merrily make their way down the Colorado Trail unsupported, with camera gear, and make a film about it was a dream so naive only nine mostly first-time bikepackers could come up with it.
Kody and I caught a ride back to Boulder to get my truck. This is the point when I could’ve set myself up with all the creature comforts bikepacking doesn’t afford, but too proud and in the moment I left my house with nothing but my keys and the clothes I was wearing—the same ones I started the ride in.
But now we had a support vehicle, and Kody, Aaron, and I raced to Breckenridge to meet the rest of the crew, drenched from their second day of riding in an incessant storm. From this point forward, someone would drive the truck each day while the rest of the team rode. We quickly hit our stride. Each morning, we would set a meeting point but bring enough gear to spend the night in the backcountry if we didn’t make it. Somehow, we always made it.
The smartest thing we did the whole trip happened before we left, which was booking a house in Buena Vista. It gave us a concrete window in which to complete the first half of the trail, and it’s hard to articulate the feeling a kitchen and a shower can elicit after days in the backcountry, but we all know it. As we sank into couches, dried our gear in the yard, and gorged ourselves on takeout tacos, Evan diligently edited photos and made selects from his laptop on the marble countertop.
“Wait, what?! Where did that laptop come from?”
While the rest of us had all but cut our toothbrushes in half by this point, Evan had been hanging at the front of the pack for days, or in front to get a shot, and he had a computer with him the whole time.
“How else was I going to edit?”
If you’re looking for a photographer that can hang on rugged adventures and won’t delay in delivering selects, may I recommend Evan Green?
It was hard to shut the door to that place, but with restlessness induced by two days of stationary living, we locked the deadbolt, tossed the key in the lockbox, and pedaled down main street toward the mountains. Monarch Pass loomed ahead. This is where Meghan met up with us. It was good to have a fresh perspective join this group of newly hardened endurance cyclists, grizzled and jaded from a week on the trail.
Lake City lies deep in a valley, more than two thousand feet below the trail, which makes the descent into town a difficult one. Not because of any technical challenge—it’s a paved road—but knowingly diving into 2000 feet of debt at a point in the trip when personal energy had become a visceral commodity to every rider was a tough decision.
When we climbed back out of that valley, we knew what was ahead. The San Juans were what we came for. Amidst the push from Lake City to Silverton lies the high point of the trail, at 13,271’. On this day, we climbed more than 7000 feet over 40 miles, hovering at 11K and above—a big day on any bike, a massive one on a loaded mountain bike.
This high alpine singletrack that snakes through otherworldly landscapes is as good as it gets. It was amidst this ethereally rugged terrain that the crew had its closest brush with mortality. As sheep on the horizon moved closer to the trail, we moved fast to clear that section before the herd. Tim screeched to a halt as a mangy Great Pyrenees charged from above and blocked the trail, ready to end this herbivore with one wrong move. For the unfamiliar, these dogs are bred to defend the herd from bears, wolves, and other beings more threatening than Tim. As two more dogs ran toward us, the situation became tense. With one strange sound from the shepherd watching on, all three dogs laid down at once, and we continued on our way.
Had I not been sandbagged, we would’ve spent the night in the alpine on this day. My knee was in bad shape, but, according to Peter, we only had a few miles and about 1K of climbing before the descent into Silverton. Too consumed by pain and delirium to check my own map, I took that at face value. It didn’t take long to realize the falsity, but that lie got us into Silverton at sundown.
Amidst caffeinated compensation for total exhaustion, it was the realization that we might actually make it to Durango that pushed us from the coffee shop back to the trail. After another day in the high alpine, we landed at a utopian lake and spent our final night nearby. From here, only a descent-dominated ride stood between us and the real world.
It’s a bittersweet feeling when a blinding goal is complete. There is comfort in the agony required to complete it. Knobby tires crooned on the pavement as we rolled into town, feeling more aimless than we had at any point over the last 500 miles. Such is the state that keeps us all pedaling.
