Day 54- Trail Ridge Road

I woke up at 5:30 because I heard a few drops of rain on my tent. I jumped up because I needed to put up the rain fly. I left it off since the previous evening was clear. Well, you know about how the weather can change quickly in the mountains.

Today was going to be an exciting, but strange day. I was going to be a “cyclist” today instead of a bicycle tourist. By this I mean that I would be riding without the bags. Just the bike and me. Also, for the first time since the beginning of this trip, I would be wearing cycling shorts without the “civilian” shorts over the top. Today I was going to ride Trail Ridge Road, a short little 4,000 foot climb up to the highest point you can drive to in the park.

I set off around 10am trying to let the weather settle a bit since it still sprinkled rain every now and then. Without the extra weight, I found that I was still using the same gearing, but I could spin the pedals at a higher cadence and climb faster. Big surprise, huh?

The first part of the ascent was nice. Cool cloudy weather, ideal for this ride. I got a hint of things to come when I stopped at a pull out. A woman approached me and mentioned that she had considered riding the road too, but decided against it due to the weather. I told her that the weather was really nice, but she said the weather at the higher elevations was pretty nasty. I thought to myself….. Pa-Shaw . I was wearing thermal underwear and my trusty rain jacket. How bad could it really get? Well, it got pretty bad. Wind, rain, mist and misery galore. So bad that I thought it was going to start snowing at any minute. At one point a car driving by took a photo of the crazy cyclist. I did make it to the high point of the road but there wasn’t a sign that I could see and the weather was so bad that all I wanted to do was turn around and get the heck off the ridge. Plus, you couldn’t see anything worth taking a photo of anyway except clouds. Sorry for the lack of any photos.

On any other day I might have turned back or even have decided to do this ride on another day. For me, today was the day. I was going to leave the park tomorrow no matter what. Whether that was a bad decision was not really an option for me. Today was the day!

The 21 mile descent was REALLY, REALLY cold! I was shivering so bad I could barely steer my bike. I stopped at every stop to go into the restrooms just to warm up for a few minutes. I might have been as cold as I have ever been on a bike. The hail storm on the Tiger Summit was close though. Call it a tie! Luckily, the weather warmed as I lost elevation. Arriving at my campsite, I put on warm dry clothes faster than you can even conceive. Really fast. Next, I needed some warm food so I rode the half mile out of the park to the nearest restaurant. I am feeling better now.

In the afternoon after I went to the restaurant, the weather cleared and I took some photos of the great scenery of where I had been.

The ride up to the top of Trail Ridge Road was the last hurrah for the real mountains of this trip. I know there are “mountains” on the east coast but not like the Rockies and Cascades. So riding up to 12,183 ft ASL was not only a challenge, but symbolic as well. Tomorrow I ride to Ft. Collins to visit Danny Long who Natalie and I rode the North Cascades with. And then it is out into the Great Plains. That will be interesting.