Sunday, 8/17/2008
I was looking forward to this day, and it turned out to be a great one. It was foggy and cool again in the morning, but unlike yesterday the forecast called for clearing and warmer temps. We pushed off from almost the top of Gore Pass, at an elevation of 9,000 feet, at 9:10 with 44 degree temps. We were all bundled up with most of our warm weather gear on our bodies. The long-fingered gloves were particularly helpful.
The first 6.5 miles this morning were a combination of ups and downs, wit
h more downs than ups, through tremendously scenic terrain. (Abundant Aspen and wildflowers.) The road was probably the most primitive we have been on to date, possibly 4WD. I certainly would not want to take my car on it. This leads to a section that plunges down to the ‘town’ of Radium right along the Colorado River. In total we dropped 2,000 feet in just over 6 miles on an isolated dirt road. It is a fun descent…a bit steep at first (so lots of braking) but it moderates towards the bottom so we could pick up some speed in parts. Really fun, and by the time we got to Radium (elevation 7,000 ft) the temps were up to 65 degrees, and we had shed all of our cold weather gear. Radium is in a completely different climate zone than we were just in…sagebrush was the prominent vegetation. All in all, a super-fun morning of mountain biking. We were passed by precisely zero cars in the entire 13-mile section from Gore Pass to Radium.
Mud in our cleats caused Mom to almost fall at one point, which would be a whole lot funnier if I didn’t actually softly tip over 5 minutes later due to the same problem :)
From Radium the next 10 miles contained two long and difficult climbs…the first one 2 miles, the second one 4.5 miles. We then had a scenic downhill most of the rest of the ride, marred only by the fact that the well-graded dirt road was host to a bunch of speeding cars, trucks, and vans. Everyone bombs down that road, making it a bit uncomfortable to bike on.
My favorite part of this ride is getting to remote areas, and we got ‘there’ today.
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