Trail Ridge Road

If you are looking for a touristy town to do some shopping and eat some ice cream, travel highway 34 West and stop at Estes Park, Colorado! You can even visit the famous historic Stanley Hotel! The Stanley is a great place to stay overnight and maybe glimpse a ghost or just take the ghostly tour! You will have to make reservations in advance! Tours fill up fast!

If you are looking for a ride, go through the gates of Rocky Mountain National Park and pedal away! Be prepared to pay at the gate. If you are in a vehicle, it will cost you twenty dollars. If you are just going to ride your bike through, it will cost you roughly ten dollars.

Matt's Cycling Perspective: The scenery and the smooth and paved roads are well worth the journey. The climb starts out gradual and it is not too strenuous at the bottom. The road begins to climb and has a max grade of about eight percent. You will continue to climb all the way to the top. There are a couple false summits near the tundra area! Since this is a well-traveled tourist area, you will have to share the road with many cars! There are many areas to pull off all along the road. Cars are constantly in and out of these areas and making left, right, and u-turns. There are tourists behind the wheels of these cars and they are more concerned about the elk they are photographing or their next rest area. The road becomes tight closer to the top due to the walls of snow that align the sides. These walls make a great photo! Know that the road does not open until around Memorial Day. It depends on the current weather and the amount of snow fall from the previous winter. This year was a record amount of snowfall and it is the most this area has had in the last thirty years! Be prepared for roads with shoulders of snow and snow run off that could lead to streams of water that make for slick areas. Overall, this was one of my favorite rides! Well worth the journey!

Erica and Olivia's Perspective: No Cooper this trip! My little Honda Fit could only hold Matt, my father, Olivia, and all of our gear including fishing rods. Thanks to my father and his season pass, we did not have to pay upon entering the gate to the park. We saw elk just to the side of the road when we entered! Bring your camera! We snapped some shots right away! The roads were all paved and there were numerous places to easily pull off the road and to snap a photo or to sit and wait for the cyclists! There are also places to stop and check out scenic "markers" and check out scenic overlooks! There were also a few restroom stops if you drank too much coffee! For the most part they were relatively clean. Let's just say there was no need to pull off and pee behind a bush! With the amount of tourists, there is no way you could even go without being spotted!

One of the first scenic areas has an overlook and fenced area to walk around the edge of the mountain. Great place to take a photo or two. The next rest area that has restrooms has a huge overlook where you can see all the way down and see what you have traveled so far! There are tons of cute little chipmunks that love pretzels too! The Clark's Nutcracker will also snatch a piece of pretzel with its beak and ruffle its feathers at the chipmunks!

The tundra is a great place to walk across the snow and take more photos of the snow-capped mountains. You will be welcomed right away by the picture-posing marmot! He is very cute and looking for food to fatten up for his eight months of hibernation! There is a warning sign to stay off of the fragile tundra. Unfortunately, many do not including three large vans full of University of Northern Colorado students who were trampling over it and taking data. Olivia was very upset!

Continue to make your way up and you will be in close proximity with the snow walls! However, there is no room to pull off and snap photos here! You will drive over some false summits, but eventually make it to the summit! There is a nice visitor's center just passed the summit and on your way down on the other side. Overall, this was a beautiful drive! The scenic areas and many spots to pull off made it great to be the tourist and snap the photos and view wildlife! I used these same spots to wait for my cycling family members to pass me by! Olivia and I were hoping to stop and fish. However, the streams were too high and rough and the small lakes were still frozen. This early in the season makes fishing difficult. I hope we return to camp and to fish next time around!

Hagerman Pass

How can you not love Leadville? Leadville is full of places to ride! Hagerman Pass is a great example. From I-70 traveling west, get off on the Copper Mountain exit and head south on CO-91 which becomes US-24W and takes you into Leadville. This is a great stretch through mountains and over Fremont Pass! Once you arrive in Leadville, you will be surrounded by the Mosquito Mountain Range on the east and the Sawatch Mountain Range on the west. Leadville has great mining history! Take some time to not only walk the city and Harrison Avenue, but even take a self-guided car ride starting from Harrison Avenue and East 7th through the old mines and even Baby Doe's shack. Leadville has many stories of people finding fortunes and loosing them. Please take some time and read some of the history of this great town. You can even walk into Leadville's visitor's center and get some great information! They have a great bike shop called Cycles of Life there too. So if you forgot something or need repairs, they can get you rolling again.

Matt's Cycling Perspective:
 I have always wanted to ride this pass! We have been coming toTurquoise Lake since 2008. My first attempt to ride over Hagerman Pass, which was back in the summer of 2008, was cut short when I decided to veer off of Hagerman and turn up a steep rocky section! Turns out this steep rocky section is part of  the Leadville 100 Mountain Bike Race. But I had to go back again and finish the actual pass! That is what I did! My plan for this current trip was to start on the dirt road just off Turquoise Lake Road and bike all the way to Basalt, CO. I did my research before hand and found that a guy rode from Basalt to the top of Hagerman Pass and clocked it at 32 miles. Considering Hagerman pass from the east side, which was where I was starting, was 8 miles from the start of the dirt to the top of the pass, it should have been 40 miles one way with a round trip of 80 miles. Nope. Let's just say this information was incorrect and ultimately lead to my downfall.

But, enough of the whining and now on to the riding!I ultimately made it up the top of the pass! The road up to the summit is a smooth gravel road until you hit 5 miles and it then becomes fairly rocky and filled with potholes. I was shocked to find my wife at the near top of the summit in our CR-V! She drove our CR-V through this? Trust me the picture of the rocky road does not give it justice! Now my wife is not the "driving" kind of person, so to see her drive this section of road with worn touring tires was remarkable and impressive! A true "sagger" she really is!  I was even more impressed with my father-in-law who was out there on his tourning bike with his 35C slicks also trudging through this rocky section! He did walk a bit, but he ultimately made it to the summit with me!

Beware! There is a false summit with a short decent! You will find this around 7.7 miles!  If you do not see the butterfly sign with summit information, you are not at the top! The top and the summit is at 12,001 feet above sea level! 

 

Desending down the summit will lead into some rocky and semi-technical terrain. There is a stream that crosses a section of the road! You will get wet! Once you finally get down to the service road, you will find easy terrain and also an opportunity to soke up the surrounding beauty! Make sure you take time to check out Hell's Gate! At least this is what the locals named it! Seems to be a train wrecked back in the 1800s. However, I was unable to find accurate information on the Internet. It is worth a photo or two. You can see the left remains of a few rusted train cars!

I hit pavement at about 22.5 miles in. This makes for a fun decend, but with my knobby tires, a bit slow! You will find there is one more climb at about mile 33 and another 647 feet to climb. This is just enough to give your legs a bit more sting! This is also where I started to realize my researched information was incorrect. After 46 miles of riding, I should have been in Basalt. At this point I sat down and ate and filtered water and decided to turn around and start back to the summit since it was becoming late in the day. After roughly five miles of cramps and pain, I realized I did not have it in me to make it back to the top of Hagerman Pass again. It was going to be another 4,800 feet of climbing and roughly another 39 miles to the summit. This was after just climbing 4,700 feet and already riding 46 miles!  I then decided to turn back around and head again towards Basalt. Therefore, the total and correct mileage from Turquoise Lake Road to 2 Rivers Road in Basalt is 54.39 miles. My researched information was incorrent by 14 miles. Here is where my true downfall begins and leaves me standing at Basalt and crying to my wife for help! A couple cell phone calls later, my "sagwagon" was on its way! My father-in-law drove from Lake Turquoise towards Basalt to come and get my deflated ego. I was feeling a bit guilty and I figured I would ride another 22 miles and stop in Glenwood. He found my sorry butt at the local McDs in Glenwood! Thanks again for saving me Dad! When all is said and done, I would not recommend this as an out and back ride unless you try to turn around when the pavement starts and roughly around 22 miles. This will give you a nice 44 miles of beauty and high altitude riding!

Erica, Olivia, and Cooper's "sagwagon" Perspective: My mother was along for this sagwagon adventure! We decided to ride up a ways and see how far we could get! That was our moto for the day. The start of Hagerman Pass is a dirt road and stays fairly easy going until about five miles in. This is where the dirt road changes to rough and bumpy road! The stretch continues off and on with some uneasy patches here and there. Thank goodness we just had the CR-V's brakes worked on! My tires on the other hand are a bit worn, but did okay in the long haul! I caught my mother clutching the car chair arm a couple times! I think she questioned my ability to travel over these rocky boulders! Oh how she underestimates me! We caught ourselves on some narrow stretches where only one car could travel a time. We kept watchful eye around switchbacks to make sure we were clear. Make sure to follow road etiquite! The car traveling up always has the right away! I stopped several times and walked up the road to see what lay ahead. If it looked okay, we continued traveling. Since the road becomes narrow, we did not want to get caught in a situation where we could not travel ahead and we could not turn around.

However, when we got about about 5.5 and 6 miles in, we couldn't turn around! We were so close to the summit! By this time I think I convinced my mother the same. She was also yearning for the satifsfaction of the summit. The surrounding beauty is breath taking and can not be described through words alone. There are several opportunities to take snapshots. We did not see any wildlife during this pass adventure, but we did see some red wild mushrooms and some bright red-orange Indian Paintbrush flowers! We also saw a 10th Mountain Division Hut. A hut? Yeah right. A beautiful mountain cabin is what it really is! You can also rent it out!

So we get to the top! Or so we thought! The view down below was awesome! We walked along what looked like tundra and Olivia and Cooper tromped here there and everywhere! There were moments the altitude took our breaths away! We figured we would be waiting an hour or two for Matt and Dad. I felt ill prepared this trip since I did not have my ice chest with cool beverages and snacks and even reading material! I honestly did not think we would make it to the top in the CR-V and therefore did not pack accordingly. To our surprise, Matt was pedaling up the last stretch with Dad not too far behind!

We enjoyed some photos and had the discussion about not seeing a summit sign. I had even walked around the bend to make sure we really were at the summit. Around the bend, the road begins to desend. At this point we let Matt continue on towards Basalt and we all head down the pass again. I got the disheartening news a bit later from Matt. We did not make it to the summit! We had only arrived at a false summit! The true summit was about a quarter mile ahead of where we were! I was quite bummed! I had worked so hard to make sure we got to the summit safely and we weren't even there! So make sure you are at the true summit! If there is not a butterfly sign with elevation posting, you are not really there! I will not make that mistake again! Also, my adivce from a "sagwagon" point of view is to make sure if you are in a passenger car that you can make it up the pass. You do not need 4x4 persay, but you do need a vehicle with enough clearance to go over these rocks! You will have to make the judgement call! If you decide to not "sagwagon," take advantage of taking nature photos and fishing! The fishing is outstanding! We had great luck at Turquoise Lake! I pulled out eleven trout alone!  Although I will not share with you my luck in choice of bait! You will have to figure that out on your own! Good luck!

Guanella Pass

If you find yourself on US 285 heading west towards Conifer and Bailey, go a bit further to Grant, CO and try out Guanellla Pass! We did today! Heading west on US 285 just past Grant you will come to Geneva Street and will be welcomed by a sign for Guanella Pass. The pass has a starting elevation of 8,675 and will reach the summit at 11,672.  Currently, the pass is going through much construction. It is passable all the way to the summit and over, but you can not go all the way to Georgetown, CO on the opposite side. However, the construction process is for complete paving of the road and this is supposed to be completed by October 1, 2010. However, it is unclear whether the Grant side will be re-paved or not? The pass today ranged from pot-holed and crumbled asphalt, extremely bumpy dirt road to a smooth and primed dirt road at the summit and beyond. We are anticipating the full paved road completion will lead to easier access and maybe even more cyclists! Map of Guanella Pass and its elevation is below!

 

                                                                                                                                                                                                       
From Matt's cycling perspective:

I brought my full-rigid Surley Karate Monkey with a Rampage 2.3 front tire and a Conti Mountain King on the back.

However, I felt I would have been better off with a cycle-cross or even a touring bike with fatter tires to absorb the potholes. Although the first five miles and the last five miles on a cycle-cross bike would have been bumpy and somewhat difficult. In addition, the first five miles were rather rough and filled with potholes and wash board roads. I felt this was an enjoyable ride in terms of being challenged. Near the top there were some spots that ranged from 9% grade. The average grade for the pass is about 4.5 % and even some areas where it toped at 11% and 12% percent, but these were short-lived.  The decends are fast and put the pucker factor up to a moderate high level! Make sure you check your speed and not loose control of you and your bike! My top speed was about 42 mph and this was with fat knobbies! Be ready for rain and storms and tuck a rain jacket in your jersey or bag! It was nice and cool, but no adverse weather conditions to write home about! Thank goodness! One thing I did learn from this pass experience, I need to put down the gummy worms and the Klondike bars and get my fat butt in shape! Here is a picture of tons of fun at the top with Olivia. Why couldn't she stand more in front of my gut?

From Erica, Olivia, and Cooper's "sag wagging" perspective: The roads were chaotic and made for a bumpy ride! The Duck Creek River is close-by and we followed it most of the way. Some of the river spots were high and rough water. Let's just say I shooed off the dog and threatened the child to stay away! There were some calmer areas and some small lakes sporadically which seemed to be well-fished. Many people stood along with their poles! When you traveled further along the pass there were additional picnic areas, hiking trails, and camping locations with fees. All of these areas fell within the Pike National Forest. There were plenty of trails that will take you all the way to the summit. Most of the campsites seemed well-maintained, but there were no RV hook-ups and all restrooms seemed to be pit-toilets and no running water. However, there was no way to know for sure. After seeing the first pit-toilet from HELL which had no door, piles of trash inside, and plenty of "poo" on the seat, no one ventured into another pit-toilet area! Here is a picture of the portal of hell!

Be careful because there are many people on horse-back! We may go back for a ride by horse! There seemed to be much business from the Tumbling River Ranch! Check it out! The rest of the road up to the summit had plenty of lush green trees where many deer quietly peered from their grazing! Although, Olivia got out of the car and attemped to have a full blown conversation with the deer which led them to become bored and walk away! When you reach the summit keep your eyes peeled for Colorado Big Horn Sheep! The rocky mountain peaks of Gray Peak and Torrey's Peak provide great spots for them to roam!       

You can also access additional hiking paths which are part of the Mt. Evans Wilderness Area. Make sure you have a sweater or light jacket in your vehicle! I, on the other hand, allowed my child to run around the summit with nothing more than a tank top and shorts. She's tough!

There are also LOTS of mosquitoes! Bring the spray! But, don't allow your child to use it! Olivia sprayed each and every mosquito and then proceeded to spray continusly nowhere which led to covering my side windows and led to poor visibility! But we were mosquito free! All in all, this was a nice pass and enjoyable ride. However, after five full hours of listening to our dog panting heavilly and huffing and puffing in my ear and Olivia swatting at him and screaming for him to stop along with the pleading of wanting to sit in the trunk without her seatbelt, I am glad to be home!