We've been through the desert on some bikes with no names.

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What a difference a day makes. Finally out of the desert, we wake to a temperature of 6C. We all look for our long tops to put on while we get ready in the morning. Today is a tough day of climbing. We're at the gateway to the Rocky Mountains.
Dressing much warmer this morning we get off at 6:30am. After a gentle start the road starts pointing up but instead of sandy or scrubby desert we are treated to magnificent vistas of pine tree covered mountains. The huge ones dotted around still showing the remains of the winter snow. As we climb to the first main mountain pass of the day Hersperus Mountain towers over us at 4000m. As we approach the pass we see a bike event in progress. It was called Ride the Rockies and had 2000 participants who did a different ride through the Rockies everyday for a week. As we went over the pass and down the other side there were some very tired cyclists on the way up. I hope it was there last day.
Although we climbed over 1700 meters the gradient rarely got over 5% and we were treated to little down hill spurts quite regularly. Our three climbs were over passes of 2536m, 2370m and 2270m, all of which are higher than Mount Kosiosko.
There were trees growing all the way to the top of the mountains and lush green valleys along the way, such a contrast to what we have been through over the last 5 days.
The only hiccup today was a return visit from Ray Charles. While Dave, Tom and I were out on the road Ray took a turn into Durango while we rode straight through. Not much harm done as the temperature wasn't that hot (around 30C) and the amount of water we consumed went down considerably so we coped quite nicely until he caught up again.
We still have a few days left in the Rockies with more climbs to come. The biggest peak we will climb will be tomorrow and is a mammoth 3,300m.

Puncture Tally Update
Tom: 2 plus a failure
Dave: 2
Jeff: a slow leak (counting as a puncture as soon as he changes his tube)
Mark: 0

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