The plan was to get on the bike before 6 and ride up Monarch Pass without traffic and wind. But with the campground being at 8630ft/2630m it was much too cold. I haven't got the right gear for temperatures near freezing point so the only option was to stay in the tent till sunrise. Traffic was still light when I hit the road and the decision of not doing it the day before turned out to be right. The climb wasn't steep at all (6%, I've had 20+, facing up to 17 in Utah) and I had a painless ride up the pass. Even though the pedaling wasn't hard, the elevation gave me a hard time breathing. You definitely feel everything well above 2000m and 3000+ is tough.
Like always when doing a big climb it was an amazing feeling when I finally reached the summit at 11312ft/3448m. It didn't feel that high because the tree line in the rockies is unusually high (dense forest up to 3700m). For comparison: In the High Atlas Mountains of Morocco it's only about 2000m.
Spent some time in the gift shop/café before I headed down. 10 miles downhill!
It's after midnight now and I want to finish the entry, so I'm gonna fast forward:
Nice long downhill but the headwinds waited for me as soon as it flattened out. Again we're talking about strong, steady headwinds that made it impossible to be fast.
Close to monarch pass the route crosses both the Colorado trail and the continental divide trail (from Canada to mexico). What a luck to meet people from both trails at the same restaurant. Shared some stories before we went on. A lady in her 60s doing the continental divide joined me for a few miles. Surprisingly she was way stronger than me, I had no chance to keep up with her. Wanna be like that when I'm 60...
Camped a few miles west of Gunnison at a lake where I enjoyed a beautiful sunset.
Oh and before I forget that: humidity was down to 16% that day, that's nearly six times less than this trip's record. No evidence of sweat, regardless of how hard you push.
Keine Kommentare:
Kommentar veröffentlichen