June 20 — Crested Butte to Buena Vista
76 miles
5:43 ride time
9:00 elapsed time
Max. elevation 12,126′
Started at 6:45
It’s incredible what one day of rest will do for both your body and your attitude! We were both up early and ready to go this morning, nervous and excited about Cottonwood Pass. It had been my singular point of worry all through training, but I’ve felt so strong this week, and getting stronger … I’m ready to take a swing at it.
A beautiful morning in Crested Butte.
Full moon over Crested Butte
We caught the shuttle bus down into Crested Butte town and stationed our duffel in the parking lot next to the transport trucks. We have a system now:
- Leave our regular shoes on, drop off the duffel near the trucks.
- Walk the requisite 19 miles to where the bike lock-up is located (always at the maximum distance from the trucks).
- Get bikes and walk them back to trucks.
- Change into our cycling shoes, stow our regular shoes in the duffel, and load duffel onto truck.
Walking in cycling shoes is a pain and it ain’t too good for the cleats, either. But now that we’re almost through the week, we’ve figured it out!
But something strange is going on this morning — why has someone spray painted all the bikes white? The cool mountain air has pooled down in the valley overnight, and there’s a heavy frost. The air is frigid. The poor people who camped out at the school last night are struggling to pack up tents stiff with frost. We chatted with one guy later in the day who said the temperature in his tent was 32 degrees this morning! We picked a darn good time not to be camping.
So it was a chilly, chilly start to the day. That tortuous uphill that we had struggled through late Wednesday afternoon into Crested Butte was now a fantastic 17-mile downhill to the turn-off and first aid station of the day at Almont. Although it was cold, the day was crystal clear; alongside the road were brilliant green pastures of cattle, and frogs singing from the ponds. Almost too incredible to believe.
RTR Day 6, Crested Butte to Buena Vista
And it was absolutely delicious “gravity biking,” which is what I’ve decided to call the phenomenon whereby all you have to do is pull your leg up and let the weight of it carry through the rest of the pedaling cycle; gravity does the rest. This happens on long stretches like these that are slightly downhill. You build up a most wonderful momentum, and while you’re still pedaling, it seems almost effortless and you can easily roll along at 20 mph. Sweeeeeeeeeet.
So we made short work of it to Almont, where we left the main road and turned east toward the pass. Yes, it was open. I was not going to be denied the chance to face down my demon.
The mood out on the road and at the aid station is high and excited. It seems the rest day did us all good, and another beautiful morning is unfolding around us. We’ve all been on our bikes enough hours and across enough miles since we began, way back in Durango, that we’re feeling strong and confident. So much effort has already been put out … so many turns of the cranks. And now this big, big climb.
Leaving Almont, the road winds up along the Taylor River through yet more incredible Colorado scenery. For those of us who live on the Front Range, cozied up against the mountains but spending most of our time on the hot, dry flats, being in the rural high country day after day is such a treat. What a truly fantastic way to see the state.
The morning chill is finally easing and a few miles up the road from Almont people are beginning to pull over to shed their layers. Lush pastureland borders the river along this quiet road, smoke drifts from the chimney of a ranch house tucked back in against the hills. The road is climbing, but gently, and soon we’re at the second aid station.
The station is back from the road in the shade of the pine trees. Carol and I are both feeling good, good, good and we take the time for some breakfast burritos and to enjoy the gorgeous morning. Another ten miles of climbing, including one sharp, short uphill to Taylor Park and the reservoir. The landscape opens up around the reservoir and we can now see the snowy ridge of the Continental Divide ahead of us, to the north and east. Folks are down on the reservoir, in their boats fishing; what must they think of this endless train of cyclists coming through?
(“They gotta be nuts …”)
We top off our bottles at the Taylor Park aid station, then pedal a few miles further around the reservoir until we reach the turn-off for Cottonwood Pass. Here the pavement ends; we’ll see it again in fourteen miles, at the summit of the pass.
Riding skinny-tire road bikes on a dirt road? I truly wondered about this idea. But RTR has gone over Cottonwood several times before, so I had to imagine they knew what they were doing. And it turns out that the dirt road is amazingly good — very smooth, wide, and hard-packed. There were definitely areas with sandy potholes (not fun; they’d suck your wheels every which way), some washboards, some gravelly patches. But almost always you could steer yourself around the hazards and keep to the hard pack. It got trickier as we ascended and people began to get tired; it required some serious concentration to pick out a good line while moving in and out around the other riders.
So now it was just time to shift it down, down, down and just chug. We hit aid station 4 about half-way up the climb and took a good long rest. The road climbed first through open scrub land, and then into the cool of the pine forest. And it climbed. And it climbed. Chug. Chug. Chug.
I started playing my counting games to keep my mind occupied, to distract myself from the tiredness in my legs. This is something Carol taught me when we were first training and I was trying to overcome my psychological distress with hill climbing, and it has really worked well for me. I either count breaths or pedal strokes, work my way up to fifty, and then start over. On the short hills around Fort Collins I never get past 150; here climbing towards Cottonwood I would do sets of one hundred with this carrot held out to myself: every time you get to 500, you can stop and take a little breather.
Now the road was beginning to come up out of the trees, and soon it began to switch back, back again, corkscrew its way up to the pass. Coming out of the trees was great because it meant the top was getting closer; but not so great, because now you could see where the road was going. And it was still going up.
But my legs were feeling great and I wasn’t having to stop. I … was … climbing … Cottonwood … Pass. I kept going by people and I kept feeling good. I came up to a sharp switchback where the photo people were stationed and I was feeling so ferocious that I flashed ‘em a bicep on my way past. Now I was climbing between massive snowbanks — the great, overhanging drift below the pass that had kept the road closed until just a week ago. People who had passed earlier had carved GO RTR! in big letters into cold walls, brilliant in the sun. I came up the last long ramp to the pass, crossed over onto pavement, and was there.
I didn’t know where Carol was; I had passed her a mile or two below and knew she’d be right behind me. I put my bike down quickly, dug out my camera, and ran back down the road to catch her coming up:
That’s Carol (fifth rider coming up) topping out Cottonwood Pass. Yeah, baby. That’s what I’m talkin’ about!
The wind was whipping fiercely at the summit, but the sun was warm, the day clear as a sounding bell. This is early afternoon on a summer day at high altitude in Colorado — not usually a good time to be on top of a mountain. But the charmed weather we’ve been having all week is holding again today and it’s time to party on Cottonwood.
I hugged Carol and we laughed; I was so overcome with emotion that I cried, too. It was an indescribable sensation — of accomplishment, pride, strength, and pure joy. I was in the most beautiful place in the whole world, with my partner, best friend, and dearest love, and we’d gotten there, together, on our own two wheels. All the hours and miles of training, all the hills I had battled my way up, all the while thinking, I don’t know if I can do this … so hard … so tired … and yet, here I am. I didn’t just climb this hill. I crushed it.
It was such a powerful experience, neither one of us wanted to leave. The poor Highway Patrol officer who was directing traffic at the crest of the pass was having a time of it — all these completely insane and giddy cyclists running around in the road, taking pictures, just being nuts — and the people in their cars wondering if the bus from the asylum had crashed and all the inmates escaped. It was truly a scene.
And ya know what’s next? Nineteen transcendental miles downhill to Buena Vista, a classic rip-snortin’ descent, and you want to talk about being high on life? You know you’re having an experience you’ll never forget.
Carol blew me up going downhill (although I think I cracked 40 mph for the first time) and we caught up with each other again just a couple miles outside of BV. “Bueny” (pronounced “Byoony”) has hosted RTR many times and is another one of those wonderful communities, like Montrose, that really has its act together. Getting set up at the high school was a breeze, and we were soon on the shuttle bus to the town park for a fantastic dinner and live music, at the end of one of the most memorable days of my life.
