This would be the third planned annual MTB trip for the whatsapp group “Team puro tipo serio”. Since Enric recently and finally said “fuck miami” and packed up all his stuff in his 2001 tacoma taking a 2 months road trip to Colorado to finally be where he (and we) belong… We decided to pay him a short visit so he could show us around his new home state.
It had been in my bucket list to ride in Colorado since some time now. I have always wanted to compare the riding in the French Alps Vs. the riding in Colorado… Close call, let me just tell you that.
Initial Schedule
Day 1: MTB – Short Loop + Paddle Board
Day 2: Independence Pass
Day 3 and 4: Breck Epic Stage 4 + Bikepack + Trail run at the next morning.
Actual Schedule
Day 1: Trail Run + Fail attend to paddle + find the perfect camping spot
Day 2: Loveland Pass in our road bikes
Day 3: MTB at Breck
Day 4: SUP at Lake Dillion
We landed on thursday at 11pm, rented a car and drove to Vail where The Doc and Enric where already camping waiting for us. We finally got to the camp at around 2:30am, quickly set up camp and when we were about to go to bed we saw some eyes reflecting our headlamps in the far away….. they were little wild dogs just starting at us.. nothing to worry about ut, but it just caught our attention.
The next day (first day) we drove down to vail and decided that because we had waken up so late, we were going to trail run in Vail. It was almost noon when we finished having breakfast at the french deli “Les Delices France” in downtown Lionshead (Kudos to my cycling cap in front of a French Deli). We took the Lionshead gondola and starting oour 15km run. I had forgotten how it felt to breath at 2.500mts. Let me tell you that it hurts… reminded me to when I participated and bunked in the Alpe D’huez triathlon (read more about it in my first post). I at least wanted to run 20k, but just at the 10k mark we all said fuck it! If we get to that 20k we are gonna be dead for our bike rides for the next days, so we called it a day and took the Vail gondola down to Downtown vail. We stopped at a Pizza/Pasta place in front of the Vail place….. which I wont recomend at all, lets just leave it there.
After having a terrible dinner at that pizza place, we decided to drive to be closer to breck where we were going to mtb two days from today. We had like 3 more hours of daylight so we tried renting some paddleboards, but the rental place was already closed. So instead we decided to search for the perfect camping spot. We google it, ask local people, drove around and nothing, they were just typical turistic places….. Also within our group we had two divas (Caco and Rei) who wanted a 5 star camping place with hot showers and hair blowers, so that kinda made it a little difficult to find, until finally a local we asked replied: ” I’ve had always wanted to recomend this place to anyone”….. So we found THE PLACE…. in the middle of the woods, next to a river creek away from all civilization with tons of dry wood around us to make never ending fires at night.
Day #2 started somehow crazyyy waking up to a HUGEEE MOOSE in front of our tent. Honestly, and pardon my ignorance, I wanted to take a picture of him and almost went looking for my phone to do so, when reinaldo and enric saw the Huge Ass@)(#%/ moose and told me to quitely run away. Luckly nothing happened and we all flew away in different directions (including the moose). Ironlicly enought, that same morning while having breakfast in breck at this amazing place called Cabin Coffee we read on the local newspaper how dangerous this beautifull animals are (we also had breakfast at the blue moose and was equally good as the Cabin Coffee – must go to both!!). We had planned to rent some roadbikes the next day to climb “Independece Pass” but logistic seemed complicated, so the Doc told me we were going to force the plan. I wasnt happy, because I really wanted badly to climb the highest paved road in North American, but we decided to instead climb a local pass – Loveland Pass instead. We rented the road bikes at a local bike shop in Breck (one pinarello with disc breaks and the other a bmc timemachine). We asked the locals where should head to in order to climb some passes and they recomended to go towards either vail pass or loveland pass…. We passed through Vail on our way to breck, we decided to head towards Loveland.
It did not dissapoint at all!! So right after leaving the town of breck we took a right towards Keystone, lightly decended not more than 10kms when we had to make another right hand to start a little climb on Mountain Road bordering the Dillon Reservoir. The views in top are beautifull, not to mention the fact that the climb wasnt hard nor long at all. Then you go on a bike lane “highway”….. (let me tell you something… I’ve ridden my bike all over europe and I havent seen anything compared to the road cycle lanes I saw in Colorado). This bike highway went down to almost the level of the reservoir to take you up again and to take you a last time towards Keystone. Again beautifull scenery all along the ride… not to mention the weather was just PERFECT at a temperature of 60’s with no clouds and a sunny day.
We made a quick stop at the town of Keystone and ask at a local bike shop which way was the loveland pass??? They said we were less than a mile away from it, but warned us that it wasnt a cookie. We started climbing the State Hgway 6 right away, at the begining it was kind of scketchy because of 18-wheelers being super close to you on the road, but just after a couple hundred meters of climbing when making a first soft turned the state road in to wider traffic lanes giving us more space to ride comfortably (although the Doc was still freaking out and winning every now and then haha). Half way through the climb we came across “A-Basin” where we made another quick stop to refuel our water bottles. We were told that a little less than what we had climbed remained, so we had to hurry in order to make it back to breck before sunset. Honestly we were enjoying so much the ride, views weather and overall experience that we were stopping almost every 5ks to take pictures and talk about how much infinite happy we would be if got to move to a place like that one.
We pushed hard the last part of the climb and reached the top of the pass when it was almost 4pm, took a couple pictures, talk to other cyclists about cycling adventures (how weird???… cyclists talking about cycling— thats all we ever do), like them riding 200 miles interstate fondos and crazy stuff like that, when we decided to head down fast, to make a fuel stop at A’Basin.
As crazy as it might sound, we had some outstanding fish tacos at A’Basin. – And I say outstanding becuase of the following….. you see… my girlfriend aka. now wife is a foodie… but a real foodie I mean it! mmmm to put it in comparisson, as I like training and doing endurance sports, she likes eating… thats how much of a foodie she is. So because of that I have been lucky enough to try some of the most delicious food (some might say) in the world, and let me tell you that this fish tacos in the middle of a colorado mountain were preeeeetttttyyy decent!!
We finished eating and started pounding those pedals to get back to breck on time before the bike shops closed. We barely made it on time and then had the MUST have crepes at Breck. IF YOU GO TO BRECK AND DONT HAVE THOSE CREPES IT’S LIKE IF YOU NEVER WENT TO BRECK. So you better have those crepes…. just saying!
Back at the campsite nothing but the usual….. bonfire…. wine and beers…… showering at almost frozen creeks…… good music….. talking about society….. telling past adventure stories and planning future ones!
Day #3 was Mountain Bike day = My favorite day!!! I am not gonna talk much about this epic day… I would never stop and will make this post soooo long and boring for some… But this day was nothing but EPIC! I rented a BMC full suspension bike with eagle on them…. and let me tell you that the sram eagle cassette lived up to its hype. That thing is amazing!!! You can literally climb anything!… The ride was super gnarly!
Not only the ride was gnarly, but along the ride we experienced the vibes of many locals riding and walking the trails. We asked them directions and long conversations were stablished…. I believe it is something most states or places with mountains have… people are just nicer and chill.
We even made “Lucifer” a.k.a Reinaldo bunked! – (reinaldo is one of the two forever youngs in our group….. he is like 42 years old and still (after heart surgery) can run a 1:20 half marathon…. he podium at Kona Ironman triathlon when he was 22 years old)… anywho….so yes, Enric and I made “Lucifer” bunked…
This day we rode 40 kms if Im not mistaken. Reinaldo was destroyed, as you can see in the picture above. He was so destroyed that him and caco wanted to pay for a night at a hotel just to get a hot shower and not shower in the frozen creek in our campsite (Caco and Reinaldo are the Divas of our group BTW).
So reinaldo had spent the last winter in breck snowboarding… Somehow he remembered that in order to use the hotel were he had stayed we just needed to sneak in behind anybody with a key…. and thats what we did… we acted like if we were staying there and sneaked in…. Used they hot showers and didnt use their jacuzzis because Diva Caco was too afraid of it… but I still insist that we shouldve done it. — That was one highlight of the trip for sure.
We had supper at a steak house in dowtown break, some good beer and repeated the campsite ritual….. beers, wine, stories and good music.
Finally day 4 arrived. We were deciding wether to ride mtbs again or to go paddle boarding. At the end, we were all kind of tired, so we decided to paddle board. We headed towards frisco – Lake Hamilton. We rented for a couple hours the paddle boards and had a blast paddleboarding in the middle of the mountains at almost 2000mts above sea level.
The trip was a success!! We drove back to Denver airport and thanks to Caco we got into the VIP travelers lounge.
I believe that this is one way to make it count in Colorado for Labor Day Weekend! Would not change anything in the trip.
MiBiCi Adventures 