I am looking through a tunnel of light filled with sparkles when I hear a voice. I hear it again and realize it is addressing me. The tunnel widens and I remember that I am standing over my bike on the top of Mt. Evans and that I just had the brilliant idea to sprint through the last switchback and into the parking lot at 14,130 feet above sea level. As my hypoxia dissipates, I see a child standing in front of me. “What,” I say, assuming the voice came from him. “Do you need a special kind of bike to ride up here,” he asks, a bit impatiently this time. “No,” I say. “You just need to be a special kind of crazy,” I tell him as I fumble for my wind breaker.

His family smiles and takes my picture as I put my bike in front of the summit sign. I ask them if they will take one with my camera as well, and they agree, summing me up to be the harmless crazy type. Here I am at 14,130 feet above sea level, windbreaker removed for effect.

By Colorado standards, riding a bike up Mt. Evans is no big deal. I got an early start and was the first cyclist up there today, but I passed about a dozen others on their way up as I headed back down. I even did this the easy way, starting from Echo Lake, instead of Idaho Springs, another 14 miles down the road. Being my first time up there on a bike though, I decided to keep it sane. Here is the sign in the lot at Echo Lake.

My ride stats were:

Distance: 29 miles

Climbing: 3,777′

Time to summit: 1:54

Total time: 2:47

Map & Elevation Profile

Ride Description

From a climbing perspective, this ride is really not bad. The grade mostly stays between 5-7% with a few short sections of 10-11%. There are actually two areas where you descend on the way to the summit, accounting for the climbing total being larger than the actual elevation gain. The road is a mess though. It isn’t so bad on the way up, but on the way down, you really need to keep it under control. Every 10-15 feet there is a crack or frost heave across the road to jar your bones. Let’s just say you don’t want to have your weight on the saddle for the descent.

After leaving the parking lot, you get a nice short ride through high alpine forest. It is short, because you cross tree-line fairly quickly, leaving the forest behind. Here is my last glimpse of trees for a while.

Shortly after leaving the trees behind, I took my first bike shot. You have to have the bike shots…

And then another, in front of a wall of snow…

And one more at the 12-mile marker…

Just past the 14-mile marker (yeah, the sign says it is 14 miles to the top, but there is a good half-mile after that), I encountered mountain goats. There was a fairly large herd of them, and several people photographing them as well. I just shot the stragglers to avoid a picture full of other people.

These two were hanging out above the road.

After the goats, the top was in view and that’s what lead me to the situation that opened this whole story. I shifted up and pedaled hard for the last turn or so, and nearly collapsed in the parking lot. Here is my last bike shot at the summit.

And one more goat on the way down.

The ride down was freezing. The wind started blowing, I was soaked with sweat, and wearing a thin windbreaker, and a big cloud moved in for the first part of my descent. I couldn’t wait to get back below tree-line, but as I mentioned above, I really couldn’t take it very fast. By the time I got to Summit Lake (5 miles below the summit), the frost heaves had made me very aware of a full bladder. It was a good excuse to stop and photograph the lake as well. Here is Summit Lake with our signature blue sky.

It felt great to get out of the drops and into the warm sun in the parking lot. Next time, I am doing this ride from Idaho Springs for a full 7,000 feet of climbing.

The rest of the photos from this trip are on flikr.

tags: colorado | Mt. Evans | road cycling