Usually 6.5 hour mountain bike rides are planned, the route determined, food packed and well you are usually mentally prepared for what lies ahead. However I seem to have fallen into the habit of spontaneously ending up on these long rides, often underprepared. That is how my most recent adventure played out. What started as a normal alpine mountain bike ride in Nederland soon turned into a six and a half hour epic mountain bike ride which included going up and over Rollins Pass twice with a nice lunch in Winter Park. For one reason or another myself and riding partner ended up climbing up towards Rollins Pass after previously hitting up some singletrack. Soon we were both possessed by summit fever and the turnaround was soon miles behind us, or below I should say. Things became a little more exciting as we had to circumnavigate the closed train tunnel.

After a little more climbing we finally made it to the top at an altitude that would force teammate Sager into a fetal possession.

With nasty clouds looming back in Nederland and blue bird weather lingering in Winter Park, the decision (somewhat irresponsible with a touch of stupidity) was made to ride down the back side and grab some lunch in Winter Park hitting up some sweet single track on the way down. Well, the descent was awesome, ripping high speed trails through a collage of different terrains and trail networks. Unfortunately, in the midst of enjoying the trails we ended up “a little off course”, and well we ended up on the far outside edge of Fraser (after some sweet talking our way off of a mans private property).

3,000ft later we were out of water, food and well, not int eh right city. Luckily for us Fraser is only about 5 miles away from where we needed to be and so we made the treck to Winter Park. We opted for burritos and one bottle of coke. As 3pm rolled around we somewhat reluctantly filled our bottles up and headed back up the 3,000ft climb. At the bottom, mean clouds were looming and the race was on to make it to the top before afternoon storms rolled in. As we flogged ourselves up the climb at nearly race pace 5hrs into our ride the clouds dissipated and we were welcomed at the top with sunshine.

The trail that used to host train tracks over the top now has a series of old trestles which are pretty sweet to ride over at nearly 12,000ft.

We descended the trails back down to Nederland putting the bikes back on the roof 6.5 hours later. No bad weather, no mechanicals, good trails, good times and all spontaneous, I’ll take it. Breck Epic is looming around the corner so hopefully these rides will pay off.

Until my next dumb adventure- Big Black