Red Kite Coaching

Coach Marilyn recently took on the Colorado Trail for a 'fun' summer vaction. The Colorado Trail is considered one of, if not the, most diffacult bike packing routes in North America. Grab a coffee, or any other beverage, and enjoy her survival tale...er....writeup below:

The Colorado Trail is a mountain bike route that goes from Denver to Durango. It spans 539 miles, ascends over 70,000 feet, is 80% unpaved, 55% singletrack, and is estimated as 10-20% unrideable (time-wise). The trail has an average elevation of 10,000 feet, and the high point crests over 13,000 feet. It is considered one of the hardest bikepacking routes in the world. So obviously, it made total sense that I, a complete beginner at bikepacking, would choose to do it as my summer vacation.

I set a somewhat arbitrary goal of doing it in 10 days, which means I’d need to average 54 miles and just over 7,000 feet of climbing per day. If I consider that with a loaded bike I might be able to average 5mph, that’s 10-11 hour days for 10 days.

There’s so much planning that goes into a trip like this. Besides my bike, I had none of the gear I needed. For months, I watched every YouTube video I could find on bikepacking. I scoured gear lists, made spreadsheets, looked for deals on bags, ordered so many things online, and psyched myself up that this was going to be awesome. After probably a full work week’s worth of research and putting orders for things in online, I ended up with the following setup:

· Handlebar bag to carry my sleep setup and in-tent needs
· Top tube bag to carry snacks and hand sanitizer
· Stem bag for the CT guidebook, GoPro, phone, chamois cream, and sunscreen
· Seat bag for repair kit, ½ the tent and poles (Brelon carried the other half + our cooking kit), rain gear, and food

Fully loaded with 3 days of food, my bike weighed 54 #. To my bike itself, I made only two changes: different grips (ergon GPs to give me an extra hand position) and my stock seat post instead of my dropper. There are many people who change their gearing for this route, but my partner Brelon was riding it with me and he was on a single speed, so it didn’t seem worth it for me.

On July 2nd, I left for the trail from my apartment in Golden. Probably one of the coolest things was riding to the trailhead. It was only ~25mi to get there, and it’s an easy route on bike paths. Riding to a trailhead like that makes you really feel how the outdoors are right there. In Colorado, they're quite literally right out of your backdoor.

While out on the trail, I relied on a guidebook for navigation and didn't take a bike computer. Not having a bike computer for over a week was unbelievably freeing. Don’t get me wrong, I love seeing numbers when I’m training, but this trip wasn’t training, it was an adventure. I spent my time looking at the scenery and the guidebook. Using the cues in it to figure out where I was going.

“Mile 6.5: Cross a jeep road. Follow the trail and after 100m, turn uphill.”
“Mile 8: Cross a small stream. Last reliable water source for 11 miles.”

It was like getting directions at a gas station from a local. Nothing would blink at me and turn red if I made the wrong turn. I had to pay attention and be present to keep us on track. In the end, I only got us lost once for about 30 minutes where a blaze was buried deep in the woods off the road and the guidebook directions were vague. Thirty minutes out of a total of 91.5hrs moving hours isn’t too bad, though. And when my body told me it was lunch time, I was happy that I was halfway done with the day instead of seeing a computer telling me the hard numbers: that I had ridden 5 hours and had at least 5 more to go.

The first half of the trail between Denver and Buena Vista flies. Yes, there are still hike-a-bikes, like the above the treeline section of Kenosha pass where you know you should be able to ride but it’s loose and narrow and your bike is really heavy and it’s >12k feet. And the 6 mile (read: 3 hour) hike over the Ten Mile range between Breckenridge and Copper where you have absolutely no hope of riding even without a loaded bike and you know that even without a bike this would be hard and it’s so steep that you push your bike ahead of you, pull your brakes, take two steps, and repeat thousands of times to get to the top. And the top of Kokomo pass where it's still wet and muddy from snowmelt, so you're walking and getting your shoes muddy in addition to your bike, and some others that I’m forgetting. But really, quite rideable and so incredibly beautiful.

Then, you get to Buena Vista and push on to Silverton. The articles I had read online said that after Buena Vista, the trail turns “more rocky and technical.” After having done that section, I would describe it as “mostly rocky hiking trails.” These are trails that are, for the most part, just not built for bikes. Most of the climbs were hikes and the descents got progressively sketchier with more and more loose rocks on narrow trails at incredibly high elevations. Many times, hikers outpaced me on the climbs, and I felt like my bike was just a machine I was pushing around to let me go downhill faster. That combined with the facts that Buena Vista and Silverton were ~4 days apart at my pace and that there were a few ~10 mile sections above treeline gave it the feeling of being more like a visitor than someone who was at home in this area. It was a breathtaking area both in its views and its ruggedness.

The trip ended for me in Silverton. In the afternoon on the 7th day, I started developing an abscess and it was all I could do to ride a full 10 hours on day 8 to get myself to town. When I called it, I had ridden over 90 hours in just over 8 days, totaling 485 miles. I was 1.5-2 days away from reaching the end, and were it not for this injury I have no doubt I would have finished. The trip was hard, but as cyclists (or maybe I’m a combo cyclist/hiker now…a hiclist) we love hard things, constantly pushing ourselves to go harder, faster, and find our limits. In a year where I’m not racing, the Colorado Trail was the perfect opponent.