Copper Triangle Recon
Posted on | July 27, 2008 |
Last weekend, the ladies (and a couple husbands) and I headed to the mountains to do some Copper Triangle recon. The mission? To scout the terrain to perhaps allay our nerves and to enjoy the Colorado mountains in the summer.
We arrived mid afternoon on Saturday and decided to check out Vail Pass after setting up camp at Black Lake. So we geared up and made the quick descent down the west side to Vail, then flipped around and started the ten mile climb back up. Descending is not exactly a great warm up, but my legs finally settled into their fate. It’s mostly a mid-grade steady climb save for a couple spots where the engineers decided against paying attention to gradient. Or maybe they wanted to see how fast cyclists could flip through a whole chainring of gearing. I noticed my front tire was soft about three miles from the top, but decided to ignore it. Yes, this is highly recommended by the professionals. But, I made it. It wasn’t an easy climb, but it wasn’t Rist Canyon (the local climb by which I measure all other climbs), so there’s that.
Sunday morning, we cruised down the east side of Vail Pass into Copper Mountain on our way to conquer Fremont Pass. Of course my computer stopped working sometime shortly after we rode out of Copper, so I have no real data on Fremont. I do know that the first couple miles were an easy climb, so I camped out in my middle chainring wondering when the grade would kick up. It eventually did, and I tapped out 4 miles of 7% grade. Fremont Pass is weird in that when you think you’ve summited, you haven’t. It feels almost downhill to the pass, but I noticed I was still working quite a bit. We all gathered at the anti-climactic top of the pass and cruised back down into Copper. After a stop at Starbucks, we climb the last 6 miles back up the east side of Vail Pass.
Then we “recovered” with burgers in Frisco.
No long rides for this recon mission, but I do feel better about what I’ll be doing in less than a week.
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One Response to “Copper Triangle Recon”
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August 25th, 2008 @ 4:56 am
Круто, спасибо!