It’s mid-June and most of the snow has melted from the high country so it was time for our first 14er of 2021. I picked La Plata Peak as our objective for the day. La Plata Peak sits deep in the central Sawatch range near Mt. Elbert and Twin Lakes. At 14,336 feet, it is the fifth highest mountain in Colorado.
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Long before it was a mountain bike town, long before it was a hiking town, long before it was a camping town, Salida was a river town. Every June since 1949, pandemic years excepted, they have held an event called FIBArk, for First in Boating in the Arkansas river, to celebrate the river and those who love it. That first event was a single race of 57 miles from Salida to Canon City. Twenty three entered, only two finished. These days, FIBArk is a full-blown four-day festival with multiple races on and off the river, music, food and all types of white-water shenanigans.
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For some time now I’ve been trying to think of a way to do the Monarch Crest trail without a shuttle. That is, ride to the top of the pass from Salida and then ride the Crest trail in one big loop. But the logistics are daunting. The Crest is long enough on its own at approximately 36 miles, so to ride it from town you’re looking at least a 70-mile round trip and probably eight hours in the saddle.
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The truth about riding bikes is that eventually you’re going to go down. The number of times you go down and how hard you hit is directly proportional to how much you ride and how fast you go. If you race on any level your risk goes up exponentially.
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In recent years I’ve come to really enjoy hiking. While cycling takes up most of my time and energy, hiking has become the low-impact alternative for getting outdoors in the summer.
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It was way past time to give the road bike some love. It’s funny, in Houston I practically lived on my road bike. Pre-COVID my routine was long group rides on weekends, recovery ride on Monday, hammerfests on Tuesday and Thursday, summer races on Wednesday, rest day Friday. Like clockwork. For years. About the only time I rode my mountain bike was to race. But that makes some sense. Houston is pavement rich, trail poor. Here, the equation has been flipped and I now find I live on my mountain bike while the road bike mostly collects dust on a hook in the garage. It was time to right that wrong.
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I realize my posts haven’t been all that frequent lately. That’s partly due to the fact that we’ve begun to settle into our lives here in Colorado and while that’s all wonderful and good, the things we’re doing don’t nicely fit into a blog that I’m sharing with the world. And partly because, as mentioned in the previous post, the spastic weather has kept our outdoor activities local, which end up being much like the ones I’ve already talked about in previous posts. But in the past few weeks the weather has started to warm up, the intermittent snow storms have turned to intermittent rain showers and things are finally starting to turn green around here. It seems like spring is real.
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A few weeks ago we had a couple of sunny, 70-degree days in a row. We were sitting outside at Soulcraft having beers with friends, enjoying the perfect weather and celebrating a great day on the slopes.
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So I was thinking of going to Leadville. Back in November when I bought my fat bike, the guys at Cycles of Life made a point of telling me about Leadville’s groomed winter trails, “One of the best places to ride snow in the area!” A couple of our neighbors cross-country ski and they also mentioned the Leadville trails to me. I figured it would be a good idea to make a trip up to the Cloud City before the snow gets melted out for the season.
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The month of March is certainly making up for what has been an otherwise ‘meh’ snow season in Colorado. I woke up Wednesday with intentions of going for a bike ride but with five or so inches of fresh snow at the house and Monarch reporting nine it seemed like skiing would be the better option.
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