Biking in the Colorado Rocky Mountains

BIKING IN THE ROCKIES-August-September 2009

The end of August beginning of September is a beautiful time in the Colorado Rocky Mountains. Our trip took us to the town of Edwards where the Vail Valley slopes down to about 7200 feet above sea level. My sister and brother-in-law Hope and Ed Tudanger live here for seven months of the year. Their home sits on a lush golf course overlooking the thickly forested mountains of Vail and the jagged peaks of the Sawatch Range. You have a postcard view from their deck and if you’re an Eastern visitor like me, it seems as though you are sitting in the middle of a happy fairy tale.

Busy giant Magpies hop about squawking and claiming their territory. Magpies are really noisy. They strut puffing out their snow white chests, suddenly darting into the air spreading their amazingly large glistening black and blue wings flying from aspen tree to aspen tree. Dark little humming birds and red finches are darting around the bird feeder that Hope fills with sugar water. The air is cool and crisp, although the sky is a little hazy because of the wild fires burning in California. Wildflowers still bloom brilliant yellows, purples and sharp whites and the hot pink, and red, purple, and yellow annuals in planted gardens are still perky and bright.

Hope and Ed enjoy all of this, and live a summer camp life. My husband Nick and I came out to play with them, and to improve our cycling skills. Ed is a serious bicycle rider and so is Hope. Nick is a stronger rider than I am, but I’m determined to try to get better.


AN EASY RIDE

For our first ride they were kind. I had my Cannondale shipped out here because I’m only 5 feet tall and it is hard to rent a good bike that fits me. Hope and Ed picked out a white Colnago for Nick to rent and he fell in love instantly. We picked up both bikes from the Colorado Bike Service shop between Edwards and Vail where Jeff and Dominique run a great operation. From there we rode up Vail Mountain to and past the town of Vail. Nick and Ed rode off and Hope led me slowly up the road leading to the bike path. Once on the path through the woods we wound our way up the mountain. It was about an 8 mile ride, and it wasn’t especially taxing. Ed took Nick on a longer ride and we all met at a Mexican restaurant at the foot of the ski lift for lunch.

It was a fast ride down. I tried to sit back and enjoy it, but I battled myself trying to release the death grip on the brakes. My bike’s computer read 26 miles an hour. That’s not really fast. My sister zooms down at 32 miles and hour, and Ed can add 10 miles an hour to that easily. The ride was pleasant and a good way to get acclimated to the altitude.


RIDING ALONG THE RED ROCKS

Ed and Hope ride almost every day. Both are strong riders, but Ed is legendary here for his grit and ability to push hard, riding fast and long. We started out late for our second ride because it looked as though it was going to rain. We were restless and when the predicted showers didn’t materialize, we decided to go for it. We sped down the hills from their home a mile into the town of Edwards and then set out along Highway 6, which runs along the Eagle River. The first couple of miles are not particularly interesting but once you get out beyond Cordillera, the vista opens up. Pale green Sage and Scotch Broom bushes with brilliant, yellow, and Black-Eyed Susans edge the road and carpet the hills.

The ride takes you out of the alpine resort and ski area, and jagged peaks of the Gore range into a rugged Western landscape. I wish that I knew more about geology because there is a riot of stunning rock and mineral formations. I bought a book called, “The Rocks Above The Clouds,” by Jack Reed and Gene Ellis, and that helped. But I think it would be fascinating to ramble around the mountains with someone who really knows their stuff.

The landscape changes quickly. The semi-arid hills of Edwards give way to jagged, deep grey, sandstone mesas and buttes. A little farther down the road, hills are soft beige streaked by black which my reading tells me is biotite. Suddenly you look to your left and there are layers of brilliant red rock twisted with totem-like shapes, and dotted with sweet smelling Sage bushes and Pinon trees. Hope points out that on this stretch of road, “The mountain formations change every quarter of a mile.” The highway that we are on is lightly traveled but you still have to be alert for cars and trucks. Mountains loom up ahead and if you weren’t conscious of pedaling hard and strong up the hills, you might want to pedal for the horizon and the sunset.

The ride is distractingly beautiful. It was difficult to keep my eyes on the road ahead. Ed and Nick were out of sight. I followed Hope who had a good lead on me. We had ridden this road all the way into Eagle and back last year in a charity ride. I knew what to expect, although I knew it wasn’t easy. Hope insisted it was a downhill ride. But I found there were plenty of uphill patches and the climbs made me slower than slow.

We didn’t go all the way to Eagle this time. Ed and Nick rode farther than we did. But Hope and I turned around after about 15 miles. We climbed back up toward Wolcott and a restaurant called the Yacht Club. While it is close enough to the Eagle River to take a boating name, the only water sport seemed to be fly-fishing and there were plenty of fly fisherman—no women.

Lunch was good. I had Eggs Benedict without the sauce. When I reminded the waitress that I didn’t want any sauce she said, “I know what no sauce means.”
Nick had a club sandwich and Hope and Ed had hamburgers and fries.
The crackle of thunder made us wince collectively as we finished our lunch. With thunder comes lightning and it is not a good idea to ride your bike in a lightning storm. So we huddle down in the restaurant waiting for it to pass.

Nothing happened and after a bit we got restless and decided to brave the thunder we heard rumbling in the distance. We took off and made the climb back to Edwards. Slow and steady is my mantra. I’m not an exciting rider, but I used the death grip on the brakes less often.

Back in Edwards we felt strong and exhilarated. Hope and I clocked 30 miles Nick and Ed almost 40. We were healthy and happy.


RIDING IN GLENWOOD CANYON

Hope planned a graduated but easy ride for the third day. We biked in the Glenwood Canyon two years ago. It was one of my first rides and as I remembered it, it wasn’t too hard, although I had a stunning crash on the return leg of the journey. Oncoming riders spooked me, and I crashed into a fence thinking that I might fall into the river if I bunped into the guys riding toward me. I have a big jagged, white scar on my arm to show for it.

Yet I remembered the ride as fairly flat. On this ride, almost from the outset, the winding hills caught me by surprise. I found that I was pushing myself although slowly to keep going. My body was tense, and my hands were gripping the handlebars and the brakes. I was holding so tight that my left pinky got numb. I tried to shake it off.

The ride in this part of the White River National Forest is beautiful. The path meanders along the Colorado River, and at the beginning of the ride the river appears gentle and slow. But about four miles in there’s a dam where the white water kicks up. It’s a spot where rafters put in and occasionally the wind catches the river water sending a cooling spray to the bike path. The trail is set deep in the forbidding, brown and grey carved granite mesas and buttes. Layers upon layers of jagged, rock shoot up from the riverbed. My book tells me the granite has been here over 1 billion years. The façade is so windswept that carved faces seemed to peer down into the canyon. Occasionally a freight train rounds a bend chugging toward a tunnel. You half-expect to look up and see bank robbers on horseback waiting on the next ridge.

I didn’t remember that the toughest part of the ride begins when you leave the White River National Forest. A steep, breath-stealing winding hill takes you up out of the canyon to the end of the bike path. “You can do it. You can do it. Don’t stop,” I said out loud to myself as I downshifted my way up.

I didn’t stop, and was rewarded at the top with a moment to refill my lungs. We were headed to lunch in Glenwood Springs. We had a long downhill ride through a community of houses to a rough, broad bike path that led to a bridge over I-70.
We took another path that follows I-70 into Glenwood Springs. Our welcome was the terrific stench of rotten eggs. People come here to lounge in the therapeutic waters of the sulfur springs that gave the town half of its name. But it appears that the springs are on the edge of town, and as you ride on the air sweetens.

Glenwood Springs is a railroad stop and it’s the town where the gunfighter Doc Holliday chose to spend his last days.

We ate lunch at Juicy Lucy’s Steakhouse, which was terrific. Hope and I had delicious wild salmon sandwiches with Caesar salads, and Nick and Ed had elk burger sandwiches. All during the lunch I dreaded that long climb up the hill. But when the moment arrived and we came to the bottom, I rode slowly all the way up keeping my eyes on the pavement just in front of me.

The downhill into the canyon was fun. Remember I’m slow, and I followed Hope. She was frequently far ahead of me even after the chain came off her custom made Seven bike. She fiddled it back on, and we kept going. It was a much tougher ride than I remembered and I remained pretty tense during it—maybe because I crashed here. Nevertheless back at the trailhead in Dotsero when it was over, I felt great and so did everyone else.


RIDING IN COWBOY COUNTRY

We took a day off to rest because Ed and Hope warned that our next ride was tough. I worried whether I could do it. But I tried to keep my cool. My knee hurt and I had a pain in my lower back and I began to obsess to myself about whether I was strong and fit enough. My legs have been a problem. I’ve had persistent tendonitis, and my left Illiotibial band has ached and been very stiff. I’ve followed a quad-strengthening regimen laid out by Greg, a physical therapist at Hospital for Special Surgery. I’ve had acupuncture with Kathy Yocum in Manhattan, and I’ve been doing a Yoga routine every morning. There has been an improvement but I’m still occasionally sore, and I try to be careful.

THE FLATTOP MOUNTAINS

So when we set out early in the morning, I was wondering how I was going to end up. We drove from Edwards to a trailhead at Dotsero above where the Eagle River joins the Colorado.

This is one of Ed and Hope’s favorite rides. Ed warned, “There’s nothing out here but ranches and open land,” and he urged us to take extra water and energy bars.

You ride out of the parking lot and up a hill into the country that was home to the Ute Tribe. The two-lane road follows the curves of the Colorado River. The left side of my left knee began to click as I pedaled. I decided to ignore it and enjoy the ride. Ed and Nick passed me quickly. I was rewarded for being slow. A family of deer came up from the Colorado River and stood in the road looking down at us quizzically. To a doe and her four fawns two women in brightly colored bike shirts and helmets on bicycles must have looked weird. The deer bolted for the wooded hillside and stood still again looking down at us as though they were trying to understand what we were up to?

The winding road leads you up and down a series of moderately steep hills. Mica sparkles in the sunlight along the wall of brown and yellow granite mountain to your left. Below the river runs slowly with only the occasional swirl of white. Three men in a small zodiac cast their fishing lines looking very much like three men in a tub from the nursery rhyme, and I yelled to Hope, “Rub-a-dub-dub.”

The soft marsh along the river rose into meadow and the surrounding countryside was surprisingly green and lush. After a few miles a sign warned, “Leaving Public Lands.” Although we were riding on a public road the vast open space around us was now private ranch land. After maybe the third steep climb and descent, the scenery changed dramatically. Suddenly it seemed as though we entered the real West. It was also the West of legend and imagination that created the cowboy movies that I loved as a kid. The landscape is starkly beautiful. Undulating grey volcanic mountains, mesas and buttes surround the deep broad valley. While there are few trees, big tufts of green Sage bush spread across the land and yellow bursts of Scotch Broom bordered the road. The Colorado River disappears behind the huge ranches. In the distance horses grazed on one ranch. On another a farmer worked a tractor. A few pickups passed us on the road, but for the most part we were alone with the sounds of the wind and the river. It was utterly peaceful. I found that I was talking to myself again offering encouragement and congratulations. Yet I was slow in part because the scenery begged to be ogled. First I was caught up with the light on the water and the beauty of the slow moving Colorado River. Then the shadows of light on the hills, and the subtle coloration in the mountains made me take my eyes off of the road. Wherever I looked there was something wonderful.

Hope was waiting for me at about ten miles into the ride. “There is a steep curvy descent on this mountain, and that means you have climb back up. If you want to go farther we have to climb up. Or we can turn around now. We’ve already ridden ten miles,” she said.

The beauty was exhilerating. It was so still out here that it was possible for a rider like me to feel the Zen of the oneness with my bike and the landscape. I wasn’t ready to go back. “I’m fine,” I said. Hope seemed happy that we were riding on.

We glided down and around the corkscrew curves on the much-touted steep hill. At the bottom I looked beyond the road and saw that the landscape was changing again. In the distance the grey mountains turned to red as sandstone hills appeared before us. We biked past larger ranches including the Rio de Luna Ranch, which was for sale. I fell in love with the idea of the big house near the Colorado River in the vastness of the valley. In another lifetime I thought, I’d be happy here at least for a few months a year. I imagine it is tough in the wintertime, and too tough for someone like me who hates the snow and cold.

I was completely happy during this ride. After another three miles or so, we bumped into Nick and Ed making the return trip. He had just climbed another steep hill. He said it was one of the steepest in the ride. Nick was still making his way up. We stood at the edge of a ranch where workers were building fences, took pictures and regrouped.

Amazingly I wasn’t tired and made the return trip without a problem. I climbed every hill slowly. Several times, I looked down at the computer and found that I wasn’t going faster than 4 miles an hour. The others were far ahead of me. Even on the downhill I was much slower than everyone else. I think my fastest time was 24 miles an hour. Hope’s computer read 33 miles per hour. Ed said he was about the same, but Nick topped 40 miles an hour careening down the hills. I didn’t care. I enjoyed every leisurely minute of my ride. On the return trip Ed and Hope pushed hard ahead. Nick returned several times to make sure that I was okay, and I was. Finally he rode on ahead of me to the finish.

As I coasted down the last hill into the Dotsero parking lot I stretched out over my bike. The others had already changed their clothes and I was happy to be back with them.

We rewarded ourselves with lunch at the Broadway Café in Eagle. Hope and I had BLATs-BLT’s with avocado. Nick had a turkey and ham club sandwich and Ed had a turkey panini. It was all good.

At the end of our fourth ride Hope and I had ridden over 105 miles. Nick and Ed had ridden about 115 miles.

BIKING TO BRECKINRIDGE

Ride five took us to Frisco at the bottom of Copper Mountain. Hope and Ed’s friends Charlene and George Straight who are both strong riders and part of their club The Vail 50 joined us. George was recovering from a few injuries so the plan was that he’d ride with Hope and me. Ed, Nick, and Charlene, who is amazingly strong, rode up Copper Mountain. It is hilly and tough. Nick and I made the ride last year, and I stopped frequently.

This time Hope and I were going to keep things simple. We headed to Breckinridge on the path through the woods and George rode with us. The first thing that I noticed was that my breathing was shallow. The air was a lot thinner because we were higher than we’d been. We were riding at about 8,000 feet above sea level. There were also more wild flowers in bloom here than we had seen on other rides. White daisies, purple asters, red and orange firecracker plants and what looked like tiny purple orchids peeked out from the edge of the forest.

The ride was moderately hilly and fun. Coming out of the forest a curvy hill shoots you down to the road that leads into Breckinridge. Across the way Lake Dillon sparkled in the sunlight. We didn’t cross over. We remained on the bike path climbing through the meadow along a stream at the lower end of the jagged peaks of Ten Mile Range. The snow-streaked caps of Breckinridge Mountain loomed ahead. Masses of white daisies sprouted in the meadow and along the road. It was a pretty, alpine ride very different from the ride through the Flat Tops.

The plan was that once we reached “Breck,” as the local bikers call it, George would turn around and ride back until he met up with Ed, Nick, and Charlene coming up the mountain. Hope and I stopped at the meeting place and watched dark rain clouds roll over the mountains toward Breckinridge. We didn’t want to get wet and Hope, who is exceedingly practical, suggested that when the others came we turn around instead of lunching in Breckinridge as we had planned.

A few minutes later we were back on the path headed to Frisco. I made it up the steep winding hill near the bottom and was incredibly proud of myself. Hope waited for me and then took off. When we were close to the meeting point Nick called Hope to say he was at the parking lot but the cars were gone. She rode ahead to see what was going on, but Nick had overlooked the adjoining lot where the cars were, with Ed, George and Charlene already changed and the bikes on the racks. Meanwhile, I missed the turn off to the lot so I kept going until I realized that I was headed up Copper Mountain.

One of the nicest things about riding is the après meal. The lunch in Frisco was nothing special. But it didn’t detract from the great feeling of accomplishment of riding seriously, although slowly, for over 130 miles in 5 days.

Great biking. I’m looking forward to next year.