Last weekend, while Emily was basking in the sun in Mexico (actually she was likely sitting in a cramped airplane going from Puerto Vallarta to Denver); Jeff, Heather and I biked into the bus made a little famous by John Krakhauer's book Into the Wild and much more famous by the recent movie of the same name about the young man who died while living in the bus. You can read an excerpt from the book about the bus and the area around it here. It was about a 44 mile ride round trip. The weather was great: sunny and about 20F with a bit of wind. The views of the surrounding mountains were extraordinary. Jeff was kind enough to let me ride his custom made titanium bike with snow-cat rims while he rode his heavier winter bike and Heather rode her bike with snow-cats. The trail was very packed down most of the way so I probably would have been ok with my regular studded winter tires but I was glad to have the wider tires where the trail was less packed down to maintain control of the bike. It took us about 3 hrs per way with about an hour stop at the bus for lunch. The bus has definitely been there awhile. About a quarter of the windows are smashed out and the wheels have sunk into the ground about 6 inches. There were some logbooks like they keep at the public use cabins along with some food, reading material, old jeans and hiking boots laying around in the bus. The old barrel wood stove looked like it could heat it up pretty good in there, even missing a few windows, but we didn't fire it up to try. It wasn't really creepy like I thought it might be. We were all bummed to see that a bunch of things from the bus have been taken as souvenirs over the years.
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