Travel | Biking Colorado’s 14,000 ft Legal Peaks
After riding a section of the Continental Divide Trail with my good buddy, I had this idea that maybe we could do a 14er? I remember just weeks before seeing the King of 14ers, Justin Reiter summiting all 15 bike “legal” peaks. How rad, seriously? Why couldn’t I do that? I’m no XC rider but I know how to get lost!
We planned for over a week and ended up deciding to go big or go home. This meant summiting Mt. Elbert, the tallest legal 14,000 ft mountain in Colorado. That evolved, and my Facebook posts got more buddies involved, which turned into a full blown, planned out, rad mountain bike adventure. I had never really done anything this gnarly and here we are in Leadville, CO staring at the mountains surrounding the city.
I left Steamboat Springs, CO on Friday afternoon with my roommate Mason, who to my knowledge is the youngest to ride Mt. Elbert at the age of 20. We arrived in the evening, grabbed some carbo-load foods at the local grocers mart and headed to Twin Lakes near camp. All I could remember feeling was anxiousness, excitement, and the dwarfing effect being packed into a basin surrounded by 14,000 ft peaks. Setting up camp right on road 125b where the Colorado Trail meets up with the parking lot, we had the trail right next to us for the morning. Figuring leaving by 4am would give us plenty of time before bad weather hits in the evening; we set up camp and built a fire.
On and off all night, we had showers and mist and honestly it was pretty hard to sleep because we were so excited, yet cold. I must have woken up three times to check if it was 3:30am yet. Once that time actually arrived, it was freezing. Literally. The raindrops had frozen to everything, we were all so chilled that I didn’t even feel like taking a shot of the pattern these drops made. We built a fire, warmed up, literally thawed out our bikes, and sent it up the trail.
It was October and the weather was changing. Probably not the best time to be heading up a monster mountain, I remember us all saying the night before how cool it would be to have a nice dusting of snow for the climb, mind you the first actual snow we all would have seen this year. Our wish came true. My buddies and I followed instructions from a source online and headed up the untraditional jeep road that crosses the Colorado Trail through rocky pine forests. Not sure if we were actually screwing ourselves taking a non-traditional route but we were all so stoked that we just kept pushing on, so far everything was going perfectly.
Alien Bikers
Stars were out and the sun was coming up once we reached treeline at 6:30am. The jeep road disappeared, our only option was to head straight up eventually connecting to the Southern hiking trail. Hike-a-bike was the only way to get to 12k. We connected with the trail again and were greeted by some of the most amazing views, stuff we all have never seen with bikes on our backs. We kept climbing, the sun was out but the wind was something fierce. We had to duck behind hills and rocks to cheat the wind and heat up from the sun again, let alone catch our breath. The struggle was real. By this point I had broken through my “suffer wall” and got warmed up to the heights. We were all kicking ass and pretty surprised we were still chugging along.
The last 1k of the climb was the easiest. Motivation kicked in knowing the top was in sight, not another false peak. This last climb had single track trail through the skree like rocky terrain, we could see people at the top looking like small animals in the distance. We made it. Immediately I noticed how many people were looking at us: confused, like we were aliens! Only a handful of people have ever biked Colorado’s tallest mountain and we were now a part of that statistic. Most people can’t imagine hiking a mountain this tall, yet we decided to ride it. Catching our strength again, we sat in the little rock hut someone had built previously, taking in the magical views and the accomplishment we just achieved. We were all humbled and on cloud nine in our exhaustion.
The best part was just around the corner, the descent. This terrain was beyond the most gnarly, steep, skree littered, high-alpine riding I’ve ever seen. This wasn’t the crap your pants, scary, steep downhill but the challenging, techy, steep riding that pushes you to become a better rider. We ran into a couple groups of hikers on the way down which wasn’t an issue because we were all respectful and honored the uphill right-of-way rule. Every trail user should know this one folks! As we kept descending, the rocky alpine terrain transformed into these gorgeous, open forests of pine and cedar with techy, flowy, single track. We managed to get only one flat and no injuries. Surprising outcome to such an epic, intense day.
The Big Picture
After climbing something like Mt. Elbert you gain a respect for these mountains. You return to normal life and are weirdly high on facing something bigger than yourself, much bigger. You’re not thinking about anything besides that moment, you deal with only the present, the now.
Places like these are rare gems that we need to protect. Being a trailbuilder, I’ve come to understand the urgency and importance to build sustainable trail for everyone to use. These mountains will always be explored and thrive; the problem is making all trail users happy. Mountain bikers are out for the same reason anyone else is trying to summit a 14,000 ft mountain. We love adventure, we love challenging ourselves and we love conquering those challenges even more. Many of us want to be a part of a working solution so we can keep exploring these epic places on our bikes. Or should we keep them a secret? What is the future for these 14ers?
There’s a battle in most of our heads that want to keep these trails secret from the biking community, but that wouldn’t be fair. If we want to keep biking trails in these epic places, the community needs to grow together and make it known that we care as much as any wildlife activist, hiker, birdwatcher, horseback rider or trail runner to keep these trails protected and healthy. Mountain bikers aren’t out there to ride off the trail, most of the time we get a flat then, or it’s a much harder path than actually staying on the trail. We don’t shortcut switchbacks, we ride trail. We can all be a part of nature, not just biking.
For further information head to: bikethe14ers.com
Words & Photos: Riley Seebeck, FlowPhoto Co.
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