Notes from the Davis Mountains, 24/12/2009

In the morning it wasn't raining or snowing, so I got up and left as quickly as I could.

Like in the jungle, I operate a wet and dry routine. That means I wear my dry clothes at night. To keep them dry for the next night, I put my wet clothes back on for the day.

Fortunately most of my wet clothes were actually pretty dry and I soon felt comfortable. My shoes were the exception. I'd kept them in the tent overnight to stop them freezing but there was no way the leather was drying out anytime soon.

It was a a cloudy day. The tops of the mountains were covered in thick cloud and the sun was nowhere to be seen. The mountain slopes had a thick layer of snow on them too. It was cold, just above freezing I estimated.

I put on a dry pair of cotton biking socks then put on my wet shoes.

Putting on wet shoes and socks is a horrible moment when out hiking but to me it is a familiar one. Once you start walking your feet soon warm up and you forget they are wet at all.

Off I went to cross the Davis Mountains with 51 miles including 2,500ft of ascent ahead of me, travelling from north to south.

The mountains looked beautiful all covered in snow, if only that cloud would shift so I could see more of them and warm up a bit.

It was a steady climb and it wasn't long before the snow was all around me. 6-8 inches lay on the roadside verges. It was incongruous to see prickly pear cacti with a good dose of powder snow settled on them. The familiar arid grassland backdrop had certainly been transformed by the storm, into a winter wonderland.

My progress seemed slow and I was distracted from the festive scene by my feet. The water had of course soaked into the cotton socks and now the cold was gnawing at my toes. I was pedalling fast in the low gears,I had even built up a bit of a sweat, but it just didn't seem to be warming my feet up at all.

I could just about put up with the painful numbness I thought. At least riding with the wind was minimising the wind chill. I resolved to wiggle all my toes periodically to make sure I still could and pressed on.

It seemed to be taking forever to get anywhere. There wasn't another soul to be seen, it was Christmas Eve after all. I supposed everyone was already wherever they wanted to be.

Then a solitary car passed me. It took an inordinately long time to go out of view and I realised why I felt like I was going nowhere. It was down to the scale of things. Even cars took ages to get places out here and they were going a lot faser than me.

Parts of West Texas are a bit like some other American landscapes. It's classic 'basin and range' country: where flat wide open plains( basins) lead to far off mountain ranges. Like the kind of thing you find in Arizona but with more grass, less people and no giant cacti.

The difference in Texas is the sheer size of the expanses. Texas is really big. The wide open plains are really wide and really, really open and the distant mountains? Yep, you guessed it they are bloody miles away!!

The epic landscape can give the cyclist the demoralising impression he is not progressing at all.

It is very inspiring but not helpful when you need to be distracted from the discomfort.

Ten miles in and I was starting to seriously worry about my feet. They were really quite bad. I had to stop and take my shoes and socks off. I wanted to see if my toes were actually wiggling when I tried to wiggle them and check the colour of my feet.

They wiggled and were white. It was OK, for now.

"This is ridiculous," I thought " standing with snow all around me and icy winds blowing up the hillside. It was much colder for the rest of my body when not riding along with the wind, but my feet were hating being in the wet shoes and socks.

I decided to break the wet and dry rules and use my dry wool mountaineering socks normally reserved for sleeping. Wool has some warming properties even when it is wet. After all there was no point in being able to warm my feet later if I'd damaged them by then.

I could make a hot water bottle for my feet using my Nalgene drinking bottle if I ended up having to camp out in the snow.

It did make a big difference. I covered another 10 miles and climbed up to 6,000ft before they stared to really dominate my thoughts again.

If I had been walking over this pass my feet would have warmed up nicely by this time. I have learnt there is something different about biking, it just will not warm up very cold feet. It is odd because your legs are working really hard and blood should be pumping away down there. Maybe it's the windchill created by moving at higher speeds.

One way or another my feet were absolutely killing me again. First painful, then numb, then coming back to life with an agonising tingling feeling. They were completely dominating my day, I couldn't really think of anything except how I wanted the sun to come out and dry them out and warm me up.

I spent five minutes dancing in the road to my i-pod: Dire Straits "Money for Nothing" of all things! It helped quite a lot.

The road got a lot steeper and soon I was at 6,500ft. The temperature had plunged. There was easily a foot of snow on the verge here and the road was covered in a slush/snow/ice mix.

Water was splashing up on the bottom of the bike and freezing instantly. The front derailleur froze up stuck on the middle cog. The rear cassette got so clogged up with ice and grit I could no longer engage any of the small cogs. In short whole the bike was slowly freezing up.

Conditions seemed to be right at the limit of what I could actually bike in, I wondered if I was going to end up walking after all.

I needed fuel but couldn't stop moving otherwise the bike and I could both cease to function. So I took out my sandwiches and ate it whilst pushing at bike up the hill. The water in my bottle was too frozen to wash it down, but the Camelback in my panniers was still liquid.

I tried to guess the temperature, a little below freezing perhaps?

My laces had frozen solid, so had the soaked leather of my shoes. I thought my socks were still not frozen. There was no point in stopping to check at this stage. I was fairly confident I could feel my toes wiggle. I had to keep moving.

How I wished the sun would come out.

It was technically hard to ride on the frozen roads. I tried to follow the tracks where cars had driven earlier in the day. I daren't get any speed up because the chances of coming off seemed pretty high, going too slow seemed unstable too with such a heavy load on the back.

It reminded me a little of tricky ascents on slippery, muddy tracks in the Dark Peak District area. I was really glad to have a mountain bike with wide tyres for extra friction. The difficult riding also provided an excellent distraction from my frozen feet for a good hour or more.

The route began to rise and fall annoyingly as these mountain passes seem to do. Reaching an altitude so close to that of the summit only to lose that precious height, before presenting yet anther frustratingly steep slope to climb.

Finally, two hours after lunch the battle was over. I passed a large space observatory and started going down for good.

On the southern side of the mountain the snow soon vanished and best of all the sun came out. Better late than never.

I raced down to what I hoped would be warmer climes.

Back at 5,000ft I still felt my feet hadn't warmed up so I stopped to have a look. Even after riding in the sun for a good ½ hour the laces and leather were still frozen solid. My socks were not frozen but they were wet and very cold. I took them off, ate peanut butter and jam sandwiches and warmed my poor naked feet in the afternoon sun.

A man stopped to see if I was alright. He offered me a lift to Fort Davis. I thanked him but told him I'd ride once my shoes had defrosted. There was only 10 miles to go and after all I'd been through it would be a shame not to finish the day.

Fort Davis State Park is a very beautiful place with curiously shaped sandstone escarpments and boulder fields.It was the kind of place I usually love.

However I was not in an appreciative mood. The last two days had been really hard work. Today had mostly been agony. In fact I had spent much of the day unable to appreciate where I was. I'm sure it would have been lovely to experience in comfort but today my thoughts had been completely overcome by my frozen feet.

I treated myself to a hotel. It was Christmas Eve and I just wanted the struggle to be over.

I wanted to wake up in a nice place on Christmas day.

I wanted to dry my shoes too.

I ate my dinner and had a shower. I lay on the comfortable bed thinking of far away friends and family.

It didn't really feel like Christmas to me.