Monday, September 13, 2010

Crushed....The Copper Triangle

A crazy man named Kip decided to do the mountain bike version of the Copper Triangle, which is a popular road ride starting and ending at Copper Mountain.  The mountain version crushed me; truly one of the hardest rides I have ever done.  The ride was 60 miles with 9,000 feet of climbing, with multiple trips above 11,000 and a high point of 12,600; and it took me 12 hours...finished in the dark (had a light so wasn't a huge deal), but really wanted to be done at the end.  While I have done much longer rides mileage wise, this ride really packed a ton of vertical gain in a short distance.....crushed, still feeling it two days after the ride.





Gore Range....

Heading down through the back bowls of Vail on the Two Elks Trail...




On or way to Red Cliff....little bit of road on Highway 24.

Redcliff

Heading up to Kokomo....this is the climb where I started coming unglued; brutal with a lot of pushing at least for me.

A couple from the pass....more up even after this, not much but enough to mess with the mind when that tired.

Wednesday, September 8, 2010

Ponce De Leon.....

....the fountain of youth, at least that is what we have been calling Lake Irwin in Crested Butte where we home base and camp when visiting those amazing trails and mountains.  The reference comes from how our 11 year old dog behaves there...since he just goes completely nuts and acts like he is 3 and not 11.  We have also noticed an amazing feeling of relaxation and rejuvenation after spending time there.

Lake Irwin...


Of course our trip was full of biking and hiking after riding; however, we did take a day off the bikes and did some really nice hikes right from our camp site.

Day one was 403 > 401...










Day 2 intent was Gunsight > Scarp Ridge > Lake Irwin...however this did not work out.  The hike up onto Scarp ridge is pretty sketchy and we ended up bailing on it, which turned out to be a long day with a lot of hike-a-bike to get back to camp.  Overall the day was still really good, just a little too much hiking.

The ride up Gunsight was brutal, but the views are unreal...





At the top finally....




Day 3 was a hiking day up onto Scarp Ridge to check it out and see if we could do the ride at some point...







Day 4 Reno > Flag > Bear > Deadmans




Of course there was plenty of relaxing and drinking beer while hiking around camp and the lake...