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Day 2 of my visit to hang
with my bro in Golden, CO, we decided to ride a good portion of Trail
Ridge Road in Rocky Mountain
National Park. At the start we had 7,800 ft elevation, 72
degrees air temp, partly cloudy. The plan was to do an out and
back to
the visitor center which is 22.5 miles inside of the Park and requiring
us to pass over 12,000 feet to get there.. Only
2.5
miles of this would be downhill. The ride back promised to be
exciting! My smile is a bit reserved here as I flew in from near
sea level the day before! |
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At the Park entrance we found
Steve's ideal house. At 6'4" the top of my head didn't clear the
bottom of the window. The red thing on the front is a 4' tall
high-lift jack. |
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Just after entering the Park,
about 1 mile into our ride, a couple
of dozen elk came galloping out of the woods toward the road. They make a very unique calling sound I've never heard before. There were some young up close. |
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Steve with Long's Peak in the
background. We each had a packed-full
Camelback with winter riding clothes in preparation for rain, snow, and
generally cold conditions for higher elevations. A rough rule of
thumb is ~5 degrees F temperature drop for every 1,000 ft gain in
elevation. We started at 7,800 and would cross 12,000 by the
turnaround point. 4,200 ft gain or about 20 degree drop in
temperature. Extra gear we packed included: headband, hat,
winter riding gloves, leg warmers/tights, shoe covers/booties, extra
long sleeve jersey/wind jacket. |
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We had just completed our
first major pass which went up to 9,600 ft followed by a 1/4 mile
decent. Here, Steve is worming his way up the road as we pedal
upward toward the tree line. We were grinding out a cadence
around 60 RPM with speeds usually between 7-10 mph. The sun was
baking us here and Steve was temporarily regretting his long sleeve
jersey. We're about 4 miles into the ride and finally feeling
warmed up! |
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One switchback higher from
the last pic, we're having fun riding on the left side of the road
snapping pictures and riding one-handed. There is definitely a
reason why you don't see many cycling pictures of people on rides! For any gear heads out there, Steve is sporting a ProTi frame with a bladed composite fork and Campy Chorus 10-spd. Being a Golden, CO native, he's smart and has a 13-29 (soon to be 12-29) cassette with 39/54 chain rings. He doesn't have any water bottles because he has a 90 oz bladder in his Camelback chocked full of fruit punch Gatorade! And those stylin shades? Prescription cut Rudy Project glasses by Sports Optical in Lakewood, CO. Jan lookout. |
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Below is a panoramic of the valley floor we just traversed. You can see the road on the left then turning right along the baseline of the evergreens. This is all at least 4% or steeper. Estes Park and our starting point at the visitor center is way down to the right in front of the tree-dottted foot hills but behind the larger and closer hill. |
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Across the way you can see
Trail Ridge Road cut into the side of the mountain and winding
upwards. Just out of view to the right
is Rainbow Curve which has a great panoramic view of about 270
degrees. We're at about 10,100 feet here. |
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On the opposite mountain is
where the last picture was taken. We're almost to Rainbow
Curve. Breathing was beginning to get a bit labored at this point
and the air temperature was about 60 F. |
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This is the first rest stop
we took at Rainbow Curve. The wind really began to pickup here as
it is a rather exposed area. You can see several sections of
Trail Ridge Road behind me if you look carefully. Over my right
shoulder to the left of
the lake is approximately mile 5 of the road (3 pictures back).
We're at about 10,700 ft here and 12.5 miles into Rocky Mountain
National Park. |
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The Line brothas at Rainbow
Curve.
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Panoramic view from Rainbow
Curve. Our destination was around to the left. The wind
really kicked up here as we were very near treeline. |
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Steve plugging away over tree
line. You can see the road we just traversed in the
background. That was the second descent of the ride.
Patches of snow appeared alongside the road here. Air temp was
probably 45 F. |
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This is the same backdrop as
the previous picture. I got a little creative in Photoshop. |
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Aric climbing over tree
line. We don't recommend climbing at 12,000 feet one-handed
recording video with one rider riding on the wrong side of the road
against traffic. |
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We reached our
destination! Panoramic view from the Visitor center. We
decended for about 1 mile behind the ridge in the far right of this
picture. There was a great view off the other side of the
mountain to see south in Rocky Mtn. National Park. |
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Steve staying limber once we
stopped riding. We stopped long enough to put on just about all
of our winter clothes, check out the view, and stretch a bit.
This was our turnaround point which was 22.5 miles into Trail Ridge
Road. It took us 2 hrs 35 minutes to reach this point. |
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After stopping at the vistor
center we began to get cold very quickly. We put on our head
bands, winter gloves, full tights, and I threw on my shoe covers for
good measure. It was at this time that I was a very happy person
that Steve made me carry all this stuff. We would only have about
2 miles of climbing on the return trip and we'd be producing a good
35-50 mph constant windchill. |
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After 10 miles of descending and
trying to catch 'Cannonball Steve', we took a break at Rainbow
Curve. We met a guy from Michigan here on vacation and he
couldn't believe what we were doing. He was so stoked that he
snapped a few pics of us to take home. Having lived in Colorado for three years now, Steve is comfortably numb to the multi-thousand foot precipices just a few feet off the sides of the roads. Not only is this reflected in his driving but I soon realized it is apparent in his descending! It should be noted that Colorado in general doesn't believe in the use of any kind of guardrail. There is one exception to this. If launching a vehicle off the side of a moutain would land on a church, school, house or any other kind of structure, they might implement a guardrail. Otherwise, you're on your own. During my one week here, I counted a handfull of skid marks that proceeded from the right lane off the side of the mountain. Steve has a few first hand accounts of observing vehicles that had very recently made the plunge off a mountain in this fashion. I guess all of this is really moot anyway since any cyclist knows that if you hit a guardrail at 45-50 mph you're probably dead anyway. If you don't lay it down and smash into the guardrail, your center of mass is so high you'd simply endo over it. I guess I was just looking for something to make me feel a bit more comfortable. But I've digressed.... So, the headwind that was crushing us on the way up became our friend and pushed us hard down the mountain from over 12,000 to around 10,500. Steve wasn't comfortable going under 45 mph despite the totally random 25 mph gusting cross winds. We rode through one gap where we could see off both sides of the road, at about 47 mph, and almost lost it in a nasty gust. This was just prior to Rainbow Curve which is why we're smiling in this picture - we're still alive. |
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My legs were very happy to
pedal a cadence over 50 rpm once again. It was a good way to stay
warm too. With about 7 miles to go and a slightly shallower gradient, Steve decided to do a bit of one-handed descending photography. I'm turning around here to marvel at his skill - or to be sure I catch him doing a yard sale all over the road! |
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At this point we have about 3
miles of descending remaining. Right above me with the snow cover
is one of Colorado's most famous 14ers - Long's Peak. |
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After finishing the ride, we
headed back toward Estes Park and home to Golden. We passed a
sign with my friend Sean on it. I was very surprised to see that
his Towing and Storage business had expanded west to Estes Park. By the way, it took us 1 hr and 5 minutes to descend from the visitor center. The last two miles we swapped turns on the front pegged at 40 mph and passing cars - they can't corner very quickly! This ride was both the longest climb, highest elevation, and longest descent I've ever done in my life! Awesome ride. |