Hermit Park to Homestead Meadows

Hermit Park is the newest public open space in Estes Park. There is a new connector trail from there to Homestead Meadows, which is in the National Forest, that allows Mountain Bikes. Homestead Meadows has always been one of the coolest areas around Estes Park to bike, but it has been way to difficult to get in there. You could either go in through Pearson Park - which is the loosest, rockiest, not fun descent you can imagine, or you could go in via Lion's Gulch, which is an incredible difficult mostly hike-a-bike trail. Great for hiking, but not so great for biking.

Now with the new Hermit park trail, it is much easier to get into that great area. Don't get me wrong, the Hermit Park connector trail isn't easy, but it is almost all bike-able and it is relatively short. After 1.5 miles of single track, there is a good sized climb on a good Jeep Road. You can the take a left towards the saw mill and there is a cool looking single track behind some of the homesteads. I only rode it about 3/4 of a mile and turned around because the trail started down and Kate was waiting, but it was really nice single track. The meadow loop has a mile or so of nice single track. There is another mile or so of great single track at the top of the Lion's gulch trail. There are many miles of great double track on the forest roads exploring all the homesteads. Without trying too hard there are probably about 15 miles of great trails & jeep roads. If you are adventurous and have a generous definition of trail, there is is enough for many days of riding/exploring. One of the issues though is the area has had so little use over the last 50 years that many of the old roads and trails are disappearing.

Mostly it was really cool to be back on the mountain bike. I have been on the road bike so much this year (about 5000 miles so far) that I had forgotten about the other. I biked 30 miles or so over 2 days in the Hermit Park, Homestead Meadows & Pearson Park areas and saw 1 other mtn biker and maybe a dozen hikers total. It was also great fun biking with Kate with her new fitness. This was her 1st time on the mountain bike in a while, and the new fitness really paid off. She was doing big climbs with no issue and even riding difficult technical trails.

More pictures can be found here.

Boulder Kids Triathalon

Elizabeth did her 1st triathalon today! She did really awesome and loved it!

Here she is getting ready for the swim. It was less a swim than it was a run through the water. I think it wasn't until the 8+ year old kids that they were deap enough they had to swim.

Next was on to the bike course. She is just starting out.

On the far side of the bike course going fast...

Heading off for the run...

And finally on the run coming into the finish line!

Copper Triangle

Kate & I did the Copper Triangle today on the Tandem. After 3 major passes, and one extra climb that was much bigger than it looked on the profile we still felt OK.

Kate was amazing. Considering just a couple of years ago she struggled with asthma with even small rides, seeing her hammer up mountain passes over 11,000 feet and enjoying it was amazing. The last climb of the day was from Minturn to the top of Vail pass. bottom to top was over 3,000 feet. As we got higher and higher and the grade was getting steeper there were people all over the road massaging out cramps and revisiting their breakfast and there was Kate behind me hammer away. Not a single extra rest on any of the climbs.

The Copper Triangle was also a fantastic route. The rest stops were really well placed and well stocked with good food & drink. The roads were for the most part great. The views were amazing. The Tandem handled really well. The new disk brake held up really well. People kept telling us of their stories of high speed blow-outs from braking too hard on a tandem. It made me feel great about that disk brake on the back. We hit a high speed of 51.7 mph on the descent from Fremont pass... There was one part going up Vail pass that was probably about a 14% grade - although hearing the fearful stories of other riders it was described as 18%, 20% or even 24% - we had enough gearing to get up without too much difficulty.

More pictures can be found at here.