Was to be 90 but we did an optional loop for another 22 miles and added 2K ft of climb. So total of about 6K+ vertical. Always hard to say exactly, nobody's Garmin agrees with each other on the statistics of the day.
But first, to close on yesterday, dinner last night was in the bar next to the hotel in Rangely... memorable because of our 16 year old waitress (isn't the drinking age 21 here?), and the expression on the local's faces as they walked into a bar full of Pactour riders (Germans, Swiss, Ozzie, Americans) watching, what is that... some bike race (Tour de France)? They'd chuckle and shake their heads before wandering outside to the smoking area; we stayed glued to the TV even if we already knew the outcome.
Today... to begin, some context because this trip is about to be a lot less about the miles and a lot more about the vertical feet, and even more about the altitude... So the altitudes to date. On Day 2 we climbed to Georgetown Lake at 6,300ft before descending to Anaconda and then Butte. Day 3 we left Butte and crossed the continental divide at 6,418ft, Pipestone Pass, a ride everyone should do. Day 5, as we did a ride around Yellowstone, we crossed the continental divide again, two passes at 8,262ft and 8,391ft a couple miles apart. Day 7 (after the town of Smoot) we climbed over the Salt River Pass at 7,630ft and then zoomed down into Montpelier. Day 9, between Evanston and Vernal and on the way through Flaming Gorge Recreation area, we topped off at 8,428ft although we spent about 12 miles over 8,000ft.
Can you hear the sucking sound of desperate breaths? The pain of low oxygen levels?
A brief interuption: for those of you reading in Seattle, I'm sorry. The temperature in Seattle this morning was 55 degrees, expected high of 75. We had 75 degrees with bright blue skies as we departed (7am) and it only went up from there. Another spectacular blue sky day, as they all have been since Butte to Ennis (day 3). As we left the Colorado National Monument about 3:00 this afternoon it was 89 degrees... in the shade. In the sun it was 100 degrees, and that was at 6600ft, about 2000ft higher than where we are now in Grand Junction. Time to break out the insulated water bottles: ice will last in them for 45 minutes vs about 5 minutes for a regular one.
Gettting ahead of myself here, about the day... If you are following at home then we were on Rt 139 south to Loma before bending east to Fruita and on to Grand Junction. Grand Junction is in the Grand Valley where the Gunnison River meets the Colorado River (guess what, both are hot chocolate brown, blech). Grand Junction and Grand Valley sit between the sandstone cliffs of the north and the Colorado National Monument to the south.
The day: for real now, we started in Rangely, where you don't need to visit, and it was warm and sunny at 7:15 as we left. It was an interesting study in humidity riding south because the start was lush and green, I have never seen Sage grow so big, 6 or 8 foot dark and healthy looking green shrubs (I think it was Sage?) amid vertical rock walls of red and tan and not a single building of any type. Except the natural gas extraction plants. Which explains why every vehicle that passed us was either a diesel pick-up truck with a Jobbox in the back or an oversized semi with huge mechanical implements for delivery to one of the plants. And speaking of wide loads, after our lunch stop we had a wide load that took an entire lane and then some, it was three cylinders on their side and it was huge, trucks coming the other direction had to pull off to let it pass. Not quite sure how that rig or that load was legal.
Anyway, for the 40 miles to the top of Douglas Pass at 8,200ft it was green with Sage which set off against the dark red rock. The first 20 miles were Tom and I with Cassie and Greg after we broke off from a bigger group, the 2nd 20 miles were Tom and I catching Cassie, then Greg, then Jim, with each person we added making it easier to catch the next one out ahead. Because those southern headwinds? They're back. Starting right after the 1st rest stop at 20 miles they were relentless and we cowered behind eachother to gain advantage, a total slog for the person leading the way. Then the climb, a real climb, up and curving and around in open range territory (out of my way, cow!) to the summit for the 2nd rest stop at 8,200ft. This is looking down from the pass at where we are about to go, before it gets brown anyway.
Then downhill, and fast, memorable for both the painful bumps from asphalt patches as well as the speed of the descent. Which never ended, it went on, and on, and on. But it went on in a far different climate, this side of the pass was dry (!) and sandstone brown and the Sage was now a silvery green plant just a foot or two tall. Beautiful in a very different way, the cliffs and bluffs and rimrock were obviously of two types, a soft homogenous sandstone with harder rocky layers sandwiched in between. So it was easy to see the rock was hard and could sustain sheer vertical edges, while the sandstone degraded into shallow slopes, so the result was cliff, slope, cliff, slope. In some areas there were edges of rock that looked the prows of ships with the slanted hills of sandstone and the vertical cliffs of harder rock. And it was all over, everywhere, left and right, and we rode out right through the middle of it over ledge after ledge. I think there were 5 of them, ledges in the road where we thought it was over but then we could peek over the ridgeline and oops, one more down and up to go. Something like this: 
All the way down to Loma at 4,00ft, about half of where we were at Douglas Pass. Lunch. A quick ride to Fruita to buy bike lights as required by the park rangers at Colorado National Monument so we could pass safely through the tunnels. Turns out they have lights that bikers can borrow at the ranger station, it is so odd that the bike shop didn't tell us that (!). $17 for a light for me, off we went. This was the optional part, the original route sent folks up the river to Grand Junction, for the rest of us Fred had created a route up and through the Colorado National Monument, so about 10 of us (that I tracked) took that route.. Brett, Cassie, me, Tom, Don, Greg, Brian (Colnago..), Big John (with the Seven) and I think Jim was out there somewhere all went right and then up 2,000 feet along the rimrock edge of the park. It was beautiful, a more homogenous red than what we'd been through with lots of Juniper, Pinion Pine and Sage. Then down, switchbacks on clean asphalt, it was a great decent, and back through most of Grand Junction the city to our hotel. Dinnner with Tom and Don as I try to record all this next to the hotel, huge steaks and drinks and tomorrow, the real fun begins. From now on, altitude and vertical.
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