Silver City to Antelope Wells... Change of plan... Columbus, NM

After a good night's rest in Silver City we decided to hang out until about noon before heading toward Separ on I-10.  It was about 50, relatively flat, miles to Separ and a lot of desert along the way.  We headed to a local bike shop to pick up CO2 cartridges, tubes, and Stan's tire sealant.  While at the bike shop we ran into a couple more divide riders, both heading north, so we compared a few notes before heading to lunch at Diane's (bike shop recommendation).

View from Separ road south of Silver City, not a tree in sight

One of the other riders joined us there for lunch.  He was a retired school teacher from Vermont, but was originally from Germany.  He had been at the bike shop to get new, wider tires to deal with the sandy roads.  We were soon to find out why he was looking for new tires.

We headed south after lunch on Hwy 90 for the first 18 miles.  For being relatively flat, it sure felt like a lot of climbing, but after 8 straight days of bike riding there was definitely some fatigue in the legs.

When we reached the turn for Separ road, there was a good shade tree and we had been making good time on the pavement so we decided to take a siesta before continuing on down the dirt road portion of the ride.

Back on the bikes we were quickly treated to a long gradual descent with a tail wind.  It was a fantastic 15 miles that literally blew past.  Then we got to pay for that.  The road turned to the southwest and the wind continued to steadily increase as we ground our way toward Separ.  As we reached a potential campsite without a bit of shelter from the wind, we decided to push on to Separ, home of the Bowlin's Continental Divide Trading Post on I-10 and not much else.

As we neared Separ the road went from just loose gravel and washboard to add deep sand.  The last few miles were truly a grind.  This was as bad as any road we hit in Namibia last summer. We arrived at the trading post in time to buy some cold drinks and snacks before they closed for the night.

They said we could pitch out tents anyplace we could find to get out of the wind including the big dilapidated plywood covered tee-pee at the end of the parking lot.  While it would have been entertaining to pitch the tent in the tee-pee, we opted for east end of the building among the yuccas and palo verde trees.

Sunrise over I-10 at our campsite at Separ 

To the sounds of the constant truck traffic and the fairly frequent trains, we tried to get some sleep for the final 75 mile push to Antelope Wells.  About 10PM, I noticed that my air mattress was flat.  I blew it up again and it quickly deflated.  I got out my flashlight and pretty quickly found 2 fairly large punctures in the mattress.  When I had set up the tent, I had missed a stick with 2 nice sharp points sticking straight up.  Luckily the mattress came with a patch kit, so I cut a patch to cover both holes and pretty quickly had it repaired and reinflated.

The trading post opened at 7AM, so we got fresh coffee before heading out toward Antelope Wells.  The first few miles are on a gravel frontage road next to I-10 and went by quickly.  Then we hit the paved road to the small town of Hachita and then on to Antelope Wells.

Start of the final leg of  the Great Divide route.

The first few miles of the paved road toward Antelope Wells went quickly as well then somewhere, somebody flipped the switch on the wind and we had a pretty steady 15-20 mile per hour breeze out of the southwest and it was only 8:30AM.  Usually this would happen sometime between 10AM and noon.  We ground on for a few miles as the wind continued to pick up.  I knew that after we passed Hachita, the road would turn more to the southwest for over 40 miles.  With this wind, it could take 6 hours or more to make the last 40 miles.  I had arranged with Beth to pick us up at Antelope Wells between 1 and 2PM.  At the rate we were making progress, we would still be 20 miles or more short of the border.

Russ would occasionally quote Buzz Lightyear "To infinity
 and beyond" as we mounted the bikes to get going...
in this case he was correct

I flagged down Russ and proposed an alternate finish at Columbus, NM.  It was also about 45 miles from Hachita, but straight east.  It is an official alternate start/finish to the Great Divide route, so it really wouldn't be cheating on our goal of riding the route.  It didn't take much convincing on my part for Russ to agree to a change of plan for the finish.  I luckily still had cell service and sent a text to Beth that we were re-routing to Columbus. NM.  That would also save her 75 miles of driving as well.  A few minutes later I had a text back that she would meet us in Columbus at roughly the same time as previously planned.

Russ and I trudged on to Hachita.  We could see the village for more than 5 miles away since the area is so flat.  It seemed to take forever to cover the 5 miles in the wind.  When we finally rolled into town, we were greeted by a guy who claimed to be a coordinator for the Great Divide Race.  He was helping reopen an abandoned gas station and pointed us to some cold drinks.

We saw a few of these yucca with
what looked like a snake growing
out of the top.  These are usually
straight stalks with a massive flower
clustered at the top. 

We also chatted with one of the many Border Patrol officers that we had seen since turning south from I-10.  9 out of 10 vehicles we saw were boarder patrol.  All gave us a friendly wave and occasionally stopped and asked if we needed anything.  The officer said they occasionally pick up an illegal immigrant, usually very thirsty since it is quite the hike over open desert.  Very rarely do they see much in the way of  "bad hombres".  Further west in AZ there are more issues, but the area we were in was basically safe and getting a bad rap from all the news.  To be sure, from our experience, there is a significant Border Patrol presence in the area.

Heading east from Hachita, the pace picked up with the mostly tailwind.  Averaging 15+ mph on the slight climbs and well over 20mph on the downs.  We continued to see a significant number of Border Patrol.  As we headed east we were getting closer to the Mexican border.  Antelope Wells is at the southern tip of the NM boot-heel, while Columbus is straight west of El Paso.

After about 25 miles from Hachita we had a surprise.  Beth met us with the truck 20 miles west of Columbus. She took our camping gear to get the load off the bikes and brought us some Gatorade and water.  With the lighter load, we pretty quickly covered the last 20 miles to meet her back at Pancho Villa State Park in Columbus.  We had made it.... 500 miles in 10 days with a broken bike, plenty of wind, snow, a ton of climbing, all sorts of road conditions, a bunch of really friendly folks more than willing to share their water with us and several "lessons learned" on bike packing through the wilds of NM.