With record snowfall in many parts of the Colorado mountains last winter, there’s still plenty of white stuff. In the San Juan mountains where I was camping and training for 4 days, they plow the main jeep roads in time for July 4th. The local towns depend on the tourism money from people four wheeling.
Normally they only have spots with 2-3 feet of snow to plow. This year they’re plowing out over 10 feet in places and the counties are running out of money. On one of my rides, I crossed the continental divide on a short part of the Colorado Trail. Even though it was over 12,000 feet there were only a few short sections where I had to walk through snow.
In a different part of the state, there were concerns that the Firecracker 50 course in Breckenridge would still have too much snow on it for the July 4th. The 2 times I’ve raced it there were no signs of snow. Just last week there were several feet of snow in Little French Gulch. I heard they hired a snow plow for some of the road and may also have done some hand shoveling. That work combined with hot weather for the last week has put the course in good shape for the race on Friday.
I won’t be racing the Firecracker this year. My fitness is still so poor that I think racing will do more harm than good. I’m still debating whether it would be helpful to do the Silver Rush 50 on July 19th. I really do want to do one race before the Leadville 100.
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Tags: Colorado, mountain biking
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Yeah, it’s crazy with all the snow this year. The Steamboat “Rio Stampede” 6 & 12 hour races got moved from early June to early August because of the snow. I read they were shoveling like mad on the Firecracker course this past week.
I’ll be up racing the Firecracker on Friday, and will be doing the Silver Rush on the 19th. Maybe I’ll see you there?