Riding the Rockies

Our ride from Colorado Springs to Buena Vista on July 5th was probably the hardest we’ve had yet. It started out really well; it was mostly downhill for the first 10 miles which brought us to the Garden of the Gods. The rock formations there were absolutely amazing! I’ve added a few pictures, but check out pictures on the B&B web page to get a better idea, I can’t really explain how cool it was. The only problem with the garden was that we all took way too much time exploring and taking pictures, even though we had a tough century ride entering the Rockies, (it was still worth it). When we finally left the gardens, we immediately started climbing up US 24. There weren’t any really steep climbs, but going out two nights ago, getting to bed to late the night before, and not being acclimated to the altitude might have been some of the factors, but regardless of the reasons, everyone had a really tough time, including myself. The wind didn’t help anything either. Right after second lunch we faced a 20-30 mph headwind for over 15 miles. The highest we got was going over Wilkerson Pass, 9,507 ft, which was about 60 miles in. We also found a tourist center there and a local VFW was handing out free cookies and juice, a very pleasant surprise after a long hard climb. Afterwards we had a short descent into South Park Valley (yes the same as the TV show). I had no idea that the valleys in the Rockies could stretch so far, it was almost like we were in Kansas again, just you could see mountains all around in the distance and the air was way thinner. We had our second lunch in a small town in the valley, then the wind hit us afterwards. I rode the last 25 miles with Patrick, and we were relieved when we found 10 of the last 13 miles of the day were down hill. We were served a great dinner by our hosts at the church we were staying at. Among the members of the church helping were a woman who was originally from near Milwaukee and a retired man who got his physics doctorate in Madison.

Our ride to Gunnison took us over Monarch Pass, the continental divide. We started the morning off at a community pancake breakfast in a park thanks to our hosts. We had a great ride to start off, there were huge snow covered mountain ranges all over the place. I didn’t mention it in the last paragraph but Buena Vista may be the most beautiful mountain town I’ve ever been to, the views were breathtaking. Anyway, we started the steep portion of our 4,000 ft climb at about mile 30. We got well above the snow line, nowhere we went was totally covered, but I was looking down at snow patches about 4 miles from the summit. We finally got to the top of Monarch Pass at mile 42, we were 11,312 ft above sea level, the highest we’ll get on the whole trip. We stopped for a good lunch at the visitors center there, then left to see a big rain storm coming in. I hurried up and got going with Dan Oates, Dave Grant, & Cole. We were sling-shoting each other almost the whole way down. I borrowed a camera mount from Dave Getchel so I could film most of it. It was pretty cool, but I wish I would have had it during some of our descents in the Appalachian’s, they were steeper and a little cooler. It still worked pretty well, I’ll try to put them in another blog entry. We got close to the bottom and got poured on for the last 2 miles of the descent; luckily I had put my camera away and was wearing a raincoat. We stopped in a barn at the bottom for cover then eventually went another mile down the road to a gas station where some other people had stopped. We’ve ridden in the rain before, but it was really cold at that elevation so everyone was freezing. We stayed there for almost an hour and finally decided to move on. We got rained on for another couple of miles but it cleared up eventually. We were happy to find that the rest of the ride was mostly downhill and Cole, Dan & I finished the last 32 miles in well under an hour and a half. Gunnison was a cool town too, we stayed at the high school and I ate at a local pizza place with a few other riders.

I had been looking forward to the ride to Ouray for months, and it didn’t disappoint. Another century that brought us along the Blue Mesa Reservoir for about 20 miles, it was amazing. It was a big dammed mountain lake surrounded by all sorts of types or mountains & cliffs. I was taking pictures left & right until my camera broke, right before the best part of the lake too. We had 1st lunch at the end of the lake by the Blue Mesa Dam and enjoyed one of the best views of the trip. After lunch we began come decent climbs mixed with some fun descents. Dan & I made a small detour to check out another cool Dam further down the Black Canyon. The road into it was surrounded by enormous cliffs and a whitewater river running parallel with the road. It was well worth the detour, quite a few other riders made the trip as well. The last 30 miles of the ride were somewhat boring compared to the rest, but there were some of the coolest snowcapped mountains ahead of us that we had seen. As we got closer to Ouray the landscape became more and more mountainous until we got to the town to find it was located in a small canyon surrounded by massive cliffs, definitely the most picturesque host site yet, too bad my camera was broken.

I drove the van the 4th day in the Rockies, something I ended up wishing didn’t happen. As amazing as the previous ride day was, it was dwarfed by the Million Dollar Highway. Supposedly it was named this because it cost $1 million a mile to build, in the 1930’s. It was all switchbacks and carved into huge cliffs, we were about 300 feet directly overlooking Ouray after the first mile. Then the road turned away from the town and into the canyon, I can’t even imagine building something like this road, it’s unlike anything I’ve ever seen. The challenging but rewarding climbs went on for about 12 miles bringing us back over 11,000 ft, then there was a big decent into another cool mountain town called Silverton. I had to shuttle everyone for about ¾ of a mile up the base of the next mountain because of some road work that bummed everyone out, but the rest of the climbs and views didn’t disappoint either. One good thing that happened in Silverton is that y camera miraculously started working again. I didn’t get any pictures of the Million Dollar Highway, but I took about 45 pictures from the van over the rest of the drive.

Durango was still surrounded my mountains, but they were nothing compared to what we had seen over the last few days, we could tell that we were right on the edge of the Rockies. So in 4 days, we pretty much biked across the whole Rocky Mountain Range, not too bad.