Day 9: Silver City to Hillsboro, NM

Distance: 55.2 mi (88.8 km)
Cumulative Distance: 740.0 (1,190.9 km)
Average Speed: 14.4 (23.2 kph)
Climb: 5,784 ft (1,763.0 m)
Cumulative Climb: 48,268 (14,712.1 m)
Flats: 0
Cumulative Flats: 5

Since we had planned a shorter ride today, we decided on a slightly later start; we didn’t hit the road until 9:00 AM. It was cool and it got colder. But we finally got our westerly winds. They were even a bit too strong at times - very gusty at the higher elevations and switchbacks.

Just east of Silver City is the Santa Rita copper mine. It has a storied history, produced a lot of copper and is now an open pit mine.

The big challenge for today, and the reason for the shorter ride, was Emory Pass. At 8228 feet, it is to be the highest point on our route (yeah, we crossed the Continental Divide yesterday, but Emory Pass, though not on the divide, is higher). As you can tell from the pictures, it was COLD. Sure we could have had on long pants but we’re bikers!

There was lots of snow around.

And again some wonderful vistas.

Keith had made hotel reservations yesterday. Angela, the proprietor, told him there was no café in town so, for $10 apiece, she will cook us dinner. (We did buy a carrot cake for dessert, desserts seem to be big with this crowd. Forgot to tell you about the desserts a couple of days ago, the bread pudding Keith had and the merionberry torte for Gaby - were HUGE).

We arrived at the motel shortly after noon and had lunch on our front “patio”.

With the spare time and no internet distractions, we did some minor bike maintenance. Keith installed a new computer on his.

Tomorrow we're headed for Anthony, a suburb of El Paso, about a 110 mile trip. Because of the time change it is still quite dark and we expect tomorrow quite cold, at 8:00 AM so we'll probably delay our departure an hour.