Rocky Mountain High: Triple By-Pass

I cribbed the title for this post from Mark, who rode a 100-mile race by this name in Colorado a number of years ago which featured rides over three mountain passes.

On Tuesday of this past week, Mark and I drove to Frisco, Colorado, in the heart of the Rockies, while we left Nathan to spend the day with his "step-cousins," Marina and Sophia, at Grand Lake, pictured below.

When we arrived at Frisco, we parked near a trailhead at the edge of town and rode to Copper Mountain, where Mark worked for several years on the ski patrol.  It was interesting to see this place that I'd heard so much about.  Mark had set out from Oregon in the fall in hopes of finding a job at one of the resorts.  He showed me where he had parked his truck in the parking lot at Copper Mountain, hopped on a chair lift, happening to share it with the captain of the ski patrol.  By the time he got off the lift, Mark had a solid lead on a job which changed the course of his life.

Copper Mountain

From Copper Mountain, we rode up Highway 91.  Along with the above picture, I have cribbed the following description from a cycling website:

"The north side of the pass gives you some of the most diverse scenery Colorado can throw at you and, for that reason alone, this is a good pass to climb. You start in the heart of Summit County and heavily forested terrain and climb to high plateaus and mining country.   From the North, starting at Copper Mountain, you almost immediately start a constant climb.  The first five range from  2% to 3% grades.  Ten-mile creek is tumbling downhill to your left as you climb.  If you take one of the several turnout areas on the left, you will find the creek cascading over numerous waterfalls. However, at mile 5, the grade ramps to first 6% and then to 7 and 7.5%.  The grade does not back off until after mile 6.5.  The final assault, about a mile from the top, brings you in at steady 5%, but a short section hits 7.5%. From this point, you are squarely in mining country.  Vast trailing ponds to the right, and endless peaks to the left." 

Another cribbed picture, showing scenery on the climb up the north side of the pass.

I took this one on the way up

I enjoyed this ride.  It wasn't too bad (2000' ascent), and the scenery was spectacular.  After descending back to Copper Mountain, we then headed up a bike trail to Vail Pass.  This wasn't nearly the climb that Fremont had been, but the scenery was pretty spectacular as we headed down.

This graph shows elevation changes up to Fremont Pass and back,
then up Vail, then back down to Frisco.

View to the south from Vail Pass

On the way down from Vail Pass, Mark stopped at one point and pointed to the peak in the distance.  "You see that peak?" he said.  "It's Jacque's Peak.  I skied down that."  If it had been anyone but Mark, as I gazed at the rocky face in the distance, I wouldn't have believed it.

A close up shot of Jacque's Peak

From Vail Pass, we cycled back down to Frisco, where we had some lunch before tackling our last climb of the day:  Loveland Pass.  We wouldn't attempt the ride from Frisco, but would drive to past Keystone Resort and park on the way up.  Our original goal was to do five miles, but I have to say that I wondered whether I'd make it.  This picture shows what was staring us in the face for most of our climb:

Taken near Arapahoe Basin Ski Resort.

I just about bonked at the point that I took this picture.  I didn't think I could go further, but Mark coaxed me on.  I seemed to recover a bit once we got about Arapahoe, but I knew we were close to our five-mile goal.  As it turned out, we were only two miles from the summit and had to climb only 600 more feet, having already climbed about 1400 feet in the previous five miles.  But it was late in the afternoon, and we had already done two mountain passes.  And it started to rain a bit.  So, despite Mark's obvious wish to proceed on to the top, we turned around.

The ride back down toward Keystone was one of the most amazing experiences of my life.  The scenery was absolutely stunning and I felt, I think for the first time, the joy of cycling.  The sun came out after a mile or two, and it was just amazing.  Simply amazing.

A picture I took early in our descent.  It doesn't do justice to what we saw before us.

The above map shows the route we took up the west side of the pass.  Frisco is in the distance.

This was not the first time I had been to Loveland Pass.  In the late winter of 1973, my dad took me and my brother Dan on a trip to Colorado to pick up our sister Karen from school in Denver.  While there, we took a drive up to Loveland.

It somehow seemed appropriate that we concluded our Colorado trip with a visit to this place almost 40 years after the above picture was taken.  Like I said in the first of these three posts on our Colorado trip, I had wanted to visit the heart of Colorado since the late 70's when I was in college at the University of Illinois.  In making this trip, I felt like a circle had been closed, that I had reconnected to a part of me that I thought had died almost 30 years ago.  It was an awesome experience.