Hopped on the 8am bus up to Boulder, grabbed a coffee and a couple delicious Santiago's breakfast burritos, then rolled alongside the foothills on HW 36 to Lyons. From town, I headed west up the South St. Vrain River canyon, aka HW 7.
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| Highway 7 west of Lyons |
Eventually I met up with the Peak To Peak Highway after the tiny village of Raymond. This is the fourth time I've ridden the Peak To Peak this year, each time accessing it via a different climb from the Front Range. After today, I've ridden the entire 68mi of high elevation road, save for the very first few miles at the southern end of the highway. (One of these days I'm going to include this entire route in a single day ride... but there are still many more remote roads to explore first.)
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| looking north from the Peak To Peak Highway near Rollinsville |
I turned onto sometimes dirt Gap Road to link into Golden Gate Canyon near the state park. I came across this foreboding signage- luckily (as I expected) this 19% grade was
downhill in my direction of travel. Although aiming down a 19% grade on a road bike still feels pretty wild. Perhaps one day I'll come back to ride up it... it'd be a fun challenge to tackle that fairly short section. At this point I had 70mi on my legs for the day and didn't have time to session it today.
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| Gap Road north of Golden Gate Canyon |
After descending to Golden Gate Canyon State Park, I diverted back north on Crawford Gulch Road to try see something new, since I've ridden the canyon several times. Crawford was a beautiful, quiet road that meandered around and connected to Golden Gate much closed to Golden.
Passing through Golden, it was a little after 6pm and I still had some daylight and energy left, so I knocked off Lookout Mountain since I was in the neighborhood. I passed "the pillars" at mile 89 for the day, and got up to the top as the sun was sinking low.
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| Lookout Mt |
I turned around at Buffalo Bill's grave and blasted down the switchbacks I'd just ridden up. This road is usually dense with auto and bike traffic, but on a late Easter Sunday evening it was safe to open it up and really carve the descent. 32min up the climb, 9min back down.
Back through Golden and towards Denver as darkness set in (I bring my lights on all these long rides for just such reasons.) I stopped off at a grocery store to get some goodies for a solo Easter dinner: some cheap ham slices, asparagus and a big potato for baking. It was a delicious meal after 114mi and 9950ft of climbing for the day! I'm bummed to fall just shy of the elusive 10K climb day, but will get it soon. And then some.
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