Finish line

Back in Durango to drop back the bikes and pack up. We fly out tomorrow for the zigzag journey home.

It has been an awesome ride.

Silverton

A final latte in the final mining town. The silver is gone so they mine the tourists now.

Rivers of Ouray

I don't want to ask why one River feeds into town clear and mountain like, then changes colour. Mind you, we have ridden post a lot of yellow and red rock areas.

Imogen Pass

Heading up yet another pass. 13,000 feet this time.

Roughing it

Sometimes lunch on the trail is a banana or a but bar. Then sometimes it's pasta at a nice restaurant in Telluride with the beautiful people.

Steep, dangerous

It is very hard to believe that 4WD traverse this trail also. But they do.

Black Bear Pass

The toughest they say. It finishes way down the valley in Telluride which is a town for beautiful people.

Rocks

In Colorado there is no shortage of rocks! Or steep hills.

Maps

Where are we? Where shall we go? Who needs GPS.

Ouray view from hotel

Ongoing awesome scenery

There had been no end to the awesome scenery and the questioning - is this the best day? It is very hard to rank them.

More mountains

More hills that are higher than Mt Cook.

More mining ruins

Mining

There is a lot of mining in this area but it's clear that when the money ran out they left town without cleaning up.

Engineers Pass 12,800 feet

The top, higher than Mt Cook

Engineers Pass

Heading up our next steep rocky track

Now in Ouray

New friends

It's easy to make new friends over here. Here's another set of bikers in the hills.

Ophir Pass II

The top, 11,782 feet. (NZ seems so short)

Ophir pass

Our first rocky Colorado pass, heading up.

Best coffee so far

Found in Rico, Colorado, population looked like a dozen or so

Strange names for drinks

Back into Colorado

But then

An electrical problem struck. We couldn't get it fixed on the trail (missing part). A young couple kindly put the broken bike on their Ute and brought it out to some mechanics.

So now we will take the roadway to the next town.

Day 6

It started so well.

Cliffs

What is it with boys and cliff tops? Today we did a half day and rode to Top of the World track. Again after a rugged track we found ourselves at a cliff edge on top of a mountain, with brave our stupid ideas.

Vertigo

These two don't seem to have a problem with heights.

Cliffs

Yet another cliff and River view.

Small

There have been plenty of opportunities to consider just how small we all are.

Steeds

Our bikes have been an excellent choice for this ride - KTM 690's

More big country

Photo stop on the way over a pass.

Canyonlands

We have seen some wonderful scenery but today was awesome riding 250km in Canyonlands. Try googling it, it is awesome and twice the size of Auckland.

Bike repairs

Sometimes the bikes don't do what the manufacturer expects.

Wash out

Those are freeway bridges above. Apparently the valley we are in fills with water often during storms.

Indian ambush

We rode into a classic country movie valley to see some ancient Indian art (plus vandalism!). We couldn't see the Indians waiting to ambush us but you knew they were there.