Ride Through Colorado National Monument

I intended to write about my ride through the Colorado National Monument last week but didn’t get it done. Things were hectic with Halloween, a dinner for work and replacing my personal computer. My computer was 9 years old and I was having too much trouble running new software on it. Oh and I spent the beautiful weekend working on my garage. There’s been something else big but I can’t post about it just yet.

On a related my stuff is too old note, a new cell phone showed up a couple weeks ago in the mail because my current one isn’t going to be supported. It’s the only cell phone I’ve had because I just don’t use it very much. The good news is the new one is smaller and won’t take up so much room in my jersey pocket.

We decided to go over to Grand Junction to see my aunt and uncle almost 2 weeks ago. Mountain biking in Fruita as appealing but I hadn’t done my monthly century yet and it was the last weekend of the month. I decided I’d ride through Colorado National Monument. I’d ridden part of it and driven through it but I’d never ridden the whole way.

We drove to Grand Junction after work on Friday and got there late. I was already pretty exhausted from a stressful week at work.

Saturday morning I got a late start but that allowed it to warm up enough to wear short sleeves and knee warmers. One thing to note about the road through Colorado National Monument is that it runs along the top of the cliffs. Whether you start from Grand Junction or Fruita, it means you have a good climb ahead of you.

I started from Grand Junction and had a bit of an easy spin before I hit the climb. Along the Colorado River, the cottonwood trees were still really pretty. I knew I had a long climb ahead of me so I just settled into a nice, steady pace. The views are really cool as you climb up to the cliffs and then go through a tunnel.

Since my uncle was working at the post office trailer up in Glade Park, I rode up there which added about another 1,000 feet of climbing. The turn off is about the top of the main climb on the main Monument road. There’s really not much to see up there other than the hills around.

After getting a tour of the post office trailer, I had a fun descent back to the main road. There’s one sharp left corner where you’re just looking at the valley far below. I took a picture but it doesn’t show it the best. At least at 40+ mph, it looked like if you didn’t make the curve you’d launch into free fall.

Back on the main road, the road follows the tops of the canyons. Although there’s no big climbs, there’s still a lot of up and down. Riding on a bike, I realized the road is closer to the edge than I had thought when I drove it. There’s one spot near the Fruita end where the wall for the road starts on the top of the cliff before it gets totally vertical. I normally like heights but I felt safer riding in the middle of the lane through that section.

Once I got to the Fruita end, I had a great descent down. That end has 2 tunnels. In a couple minutes I was done what had taken me an hour to climb on the other end.

From Fruita back to Grand Junction is ever so slightly uphill but seems flat. Since the loop from my aunt and uncle’s house was only about 65 miles, I was going to ride at least an extra 25 files on Highway 50 towards Montrose. That would have given me the minimum 90 miles to count as a century for the UMCA Year Rounder.

I got thinking about it. I was really tired. Partly from the ride and partly from the week. About the last hour of riding would be after dark, although I had my lights with me so it didn’t really matter. I still decided riding almost a century wasn’t that important and there was no reason to turn a great ride into something I didn’t enjoy. Of course once I turned around and was about a mile from the end of my ride some rednecks had to throw a pop bottle at me.

I ended up doing 71.3 miles with 3937 feet of climbing in 5:11 of ride time. It wasn’t as much as I had planned but Highway 50 is pretty boring and hanging out at the house as more enjoyable.

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Tags: century ride, Colorado, cycling, UMCA Year Rounder

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