Yesterday’s 30 mile group ride….Processing: IMG_3168.jpeg…![IMG_3179|375x500]
(upload://4qmOmAGQ1HjiD25Vj1KrYAdbuLJ.jpeg)
This morning’s solo 16 miles…
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@pkdaylu Wow! I have nothing to complain about about! Hats off to you, Sir! Is that the misses with you?
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Yes, that’s my spouse, who has to wait a lot for me, because she’s a life long athlete – marathon runner, mountain runner, four-time full Ironman finisher before she had emergency hip replacement six year ago after a bike crash. She can still do half-ironman races and lots of aquabike races. And I’m a bit closer behind her than I used to be. Getting ready for an Italian Alps / Dolomites trip starting September 1, including Passo Giau, Passo Gavia, and the Stelvio. Can’t hit those grades in Colorado, so we compensate with higher altitude!
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That’s freaking awesome! I’m jealous 
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This has piqued my interest - in your part of the Rockies, do the roads take the long way around just to keep the gradients low? By my reckoning you’ve climbed about 4000ft to the top of that pass but not had to spend much, if any, time above 10%? This is especially alien to me as an Englishman - go to the mountainous areas of England and the roads just smash straight up at 20-30%! 
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Most of the longer roads in the Colorado Rockies were constructed in the early years of the internal combustion engine and the grades usually limited to 7% or so. If necessary, that means switchbacks and the like to keep the grades limited. Some of the passes and other climbs I’ve experienced in the Alps seem to be from a horse- or donkey-drawn cart era.
In the foothills near west of Denver, there are a number of rides that have shorter stretches of 10% or even more, but the long mountain passes reaching as high as the Fremont Pass photo above are rarely that steep.
Another factor here is that the valley roads between climbs tend to be quite high. Our start and end of that long loop was at approximately 9700 feet elevation. Our lowest point was about 7500 feet, which is probably only about 12 or 1300 feet lower than the Stelvio summit.
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Climbed Mont Ventoux for the first time July 5th. One of the best rides of my life. Loved every second of it.
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WOW! Spectacular! Now go do it again, in reverse order 
Seriously, those images are fantastic!!
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Last Saturday’s ride: A short (41 mi round trip) out and back from South Fork, Colorado (elevation about 8,150 feet) to the top of Wolf Creek Pass (elevation 10,857 feet). Sharp-eyed readers might notice one of my water bottles and my wind vest! When we started it was 43 degrees F, which is something like 6 or 7 degrees C, and at the summit it was only about 55 F or 13 C!
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