I'm going up there where the Aspens are yellow!

Old Stage Rd--Colo Spgs to Victor!

I've wanted to tackle this ride for quite some time now, but haven't quite bucked up. Well this weekend I decided to bite the bullet. You may wonder why I haven't done it; well a couple reasons. 1) It's an out and back which is a dislike in my book, 2) it's a gravel road the entire way, 3) it's 30 miles of gravel roads each way, 4) the chatter bumps on the gravel, 5) it starts with a 2+ hr climb to above 9,000 ft, 6) don't want to do it alone, and 7) didn't want to do in on a road or exclusive mtb bike.

Still climbing into the aspens on Old Stage. See the chatter bumps?

I got over 1-7 and jumped on this weekend since I borrowed some 700c wheels to put on my HT mtb. It was the perfect bike for the adventure, except for the 11x23 cassette paired with my 38t single front chainring. That make for a tough 1x9 setup for this amount of climbing. It was cool though to leave from the house in Old Colorado City, hit the regional trails through Red Rocks Canyon, connecting to Lower Gold Camp Rd for about 45 min, to Upper Gold Camp for about an hrs worth of climbing, connecting to Old Stage Road for a couple more hours of climbing. It took about 3 hrs to get to the end of the gravel and I was still on the other side of Victor Pass (10,200ft), unfortunately where I needed to go to get some much needed food and beverage. I must say, Victor, CO is a creapy little abandoned mining district where I found one country store where I made a seat my home for a cup of Italian Spinach soup complemented with a greasy double cheeseburger. Yum, the benefit of climbing for 3 hrs! Once I headed home luckily the return trip was only about 2 hrs with the majority downhill. Just a little numb hands and quad pump from soaking up the washboards in the gravel.

Well sometimes pictures say it best, so I'll let you take a look and decide.

Not a bad little valley to peer into while chowing a Clifbar!

Check out this "unique" ranch name. Couldn't help but snap a pic.

I was glad to see some humor like this sign out there b/c it ended up be a 6 hour round trip of pedalling not including the 45 min stop for sustanance. The funny part was on Sunday, I topped it off with doing one of the next hardest gravel road climbs in the Springs with Scotty, Rampart Range Rd. Which is more used and thus worse chatter bumps in the gravel. I'm definitely going to sleep like a baby tonight and take a much needed rest day on Monday. Ahhhhh!

Next on the agenda, maybe 24 hrs of Moab or some cross racing if I can get the Giant squared away. I just found out the TCX0 is on a 3 wk backorder, so I'll be on a build kit frenzy tomorrow! Couldn't have just been easy.