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Distance: 29 miles
Elevation Gain: 3,470’
I’ve been doing a fair amount of riding with my mountain bike this summer, but up until today it has been purely for training. Today I think I crossed the line. Since I’m starting to get a little bored with my rides from the house, I decided to pack the bike into the car and try riding up Mount Evans.
I arrived at the pay station at Echo Lake TH about 8:00 AM this morning, paid $3 for a personal day pass, and parked my car. The sign said it was 14 miles to the summit.
About 4 miles into it, I wondered if I bit off more than I could chew. I was already tired and still had 10 miles to go. I stopped at the 4 mile mark and contemplated my future. Part of me was saying that I’ve already been riding up hill for over an hour, which is a fair workout in anybody’s book. But another part of me wanted to go on. I ate half an English muffin, chugged down some water and continued on. Oddly I felt fresh again and decided to take it one mile at a time, knowing that any time I wanted, I could turn around and have a wonderful downhill ride all the way to my car.
At the 5 mile mark I stopped and ate the other half of my muffin, drank some more water, and continued on. Well above tree line, I got mesmerized by the scenery and the miles started passing by. Before I knew it I was headed towards Summit Lake and the road started leveling off and actually started going slightly downhill!
Once at Summit Lake I got summit fever and there was no longer any turning back for me, unless of course the weather turned bad, but that was not the case today. With 5 miles to go, I kept at my slow & steady pace. I think there was a mile-mark missing (or I just missed it) and this really blew my mind. I couldn’t figure out why the next mile was taking so long. Finally when the next mile-mark came and it was 2 more than last time, I was relieved. Unfortunately whatever joy I got from that was taken away when I passed the 14 mile mark and was still not at the summit. They lied! As it turned out, I still had about a half-mile (and quite a bit of elevation) to go to reach the summit parking lot.
This was starting to remind me of the PPA I did a few weeks ago, and in fact was the best workout I have gotten since then. I reached the top in 3 hours and 35 minutes, and was greeted by a large group of bike riders at the top. They invited me to get out of the wind with them and hang out on the rocks. Good people!
The ride down was delightful and would have taken me about 30 minutes if I hadn’t made a few photography stops along the way. It was not so steep that you had to ride the breaks, but steep enough that you could easily do the speed limit and go as fast as the cars. |
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