Three Times Triple By-Pass

The Triple By-Pass is a 120 miles road ride from Evergreen to Avon and rakes up more than 10,000 ft of climbing as it goes over 3 passes; Juniper Pass (11,140 ft), Loveland Pass (11,990 ft) and Vail Pass (10,560 ft). This past Saturday I rode it for the third time.

My first Triple By-Pass was back in 2006. I had signed up with visions of riding through the beautiful Rocky Mountains in sunny clear weather enjoying the dry crisp mountain air. It didn’t turn out that way. It rained from the start to the finish; light rain, medium rain, heavy rain, and even sleet as I went over Loveland Pass. It was a tough and incredibly cold ride. Many riders ended up hypothermic and purportedly less than a third of the registered riders finished the ride. Start to Finish took me 8 hours and 31 minutes. The cold weather was a strong encouragement to finish as fast as possible!

Despite (or maybe because of) the wet and cold experience in 2006 I signed up again for the Triple By-Pass in 2007, and I am glad I did. My vision of a long sunny ride through the mountains came through. I had a great ride and Start to Finish took me 8 hours and 12 minutes; only a little bit faster than the previous rainy year, but I think I spent more time at the aid stations as the ride on dry pavement had to have been faster, especially the descents.

So, this past Saturday: Triple By-Pass 2008. My third one. Jen and I got up really early to be in Evergreen a little after 6 am. I got the bike ready, got myself dressed, put on sunscreen, kissed Jen and took off. Jen had made plans for a mountain bike ride with Mike, while Sue and I rode the Triple. I kept looking out for Sue, but I never saw her. It turns out that she started only 5 minutes or so after me.

I went through the Start “gate” at exactly 6:30 am. The air was chilly, but the sun was out. A lot of people had dressed up significantly; long sleeves, jackets, long pants. I was wearing short sleeves and shorts, counting on the temps warming up as the day would progress. The first part of the ride is anyway a climb up to the top of Juniper Pass, so if I would be cold I figured I could just rider harder!

I was feeling good out the gate and quickly settled into a good pace. I second guessed my pace a couple of times as I was flying by people, wondering if I was going out too fast, but my heart rate was looking good so I kept it up.

The climb from the start to Juniper pass is at a reasonable average grade of 5% or so, and it wasn’t long before I had climbed enough to be able to take in the views of the snow covered mountains in the west.

The morning view was still a bit hazy as the sun had yet to burn off what little moisture was lingering from the cooler night, making it hard to truly capture the views on pictures.

I finished up the first major climb to Juniper Pass in about 1.5 hours. Lots of people were already here. They must have started early, and it seemed like they all needed to stop for a potty break and/or fuel up. I still had plenty of water so I just pushed on as best as I could through all the people running around and across the road.

I don’t know what the actual temperature was when I got to the top of Juniper Pass, but it was cold enough that I chose to put my arm warmers and jacket on for the descend down to Idaho Springs, and I am glad that I did. My hands were freezing by the time the road leveled out into Idaho Springs. It wasn’t quite as cold as back in 2006, but it was close.

While it was cold coming down to Idaho Springs it didn’t take long to warm up again. The ride west out of Idaho Springs had the warming sun in the back. Furthermore the ride turns into a slight climb as soon as you leave Idaho Springs heading for Georgetown; not as steep as the first climb up to Juniper Pass, but a climb nevertheless.

The next aid station was located a little before Georgetown, but not by the lake where it used to be. Instead it was in a somewhat arbitrary place just on the side of the road. I was a little surprised getting to the aid station already here. I had planned to stop at the Georgetown aid station, but this seemed a little too early. I still had plenty of water left so I decided to continue and instead stop at the bigger aid station at Loveland Ski Area.

Leaving Georgetown, the grade of the climb gets a little steeper going up to Silver Plume. I was still feeling good, but wondering about my food and water intake. At this time I had been on the bike for about 3 hours and roughly 45 miles into the ride, and I had only eaten 3 Clif Bloks and yet to finish my second bottle of water. My thoughts went back to the Firecracker 50 ride where I finished feeling fine on very little food, so I motored on hoping that I would be OK to next aid station.

From Silver Plume to Bakerville the route continues on the Frontage Road which is calm and tucked away next to the river away from the Interstate. Starting in Bakerville, however, that changes as the route takes you onto my least favourite section of the whole ride; the I-70 stretch to the Loveland Ski area exist. The ride is actually on the freeway, and while there’s a pretty wide berm, you are still awfully close to the fast moving traffic. This section was especially bad back in 2006 when 18-wheelers kicked up loads of rain water as they went by you.

This year I tried to enjoy the ride here a little more; focused on looking around and finding good views and checking out the wild flowers next to the road.

Before too long I was able to spot the easily recognizable features of Loveland ski area. From here it was just a small grunt up the road before it was time to get off I-70 again.

The Loveland Ski Area aid station, or better yet “rest stop” as one of the volunteers called it, is always a welcomed stop. This is the big “lunch” stop and the selection here in terms of food and beverages is pretty darn good. I munched on turkey sandwich, oranges and watermelon. Filled up my water bottles; one with plain water, the other with “Riptide Rush”. The latter sounded like something I could use to help get me over Loveland Pass.

From Loveland Ski Area its a steep climb up over Loveland Pass.

I felt pretty strong going up to the pass and it didn’t take long before Loveland Ski Area and the Aid Station was way down below me.

I topped out at Loveland pass about 4.5 hours into the ride. The worst climbing behind me and 60 miles on the odometer. Half way there!

The descent down from Loveland Pass is a BLAST and although I was flying I had to slow down and snap a couple of pictures.

The views from the Continental Divide are so amazing.

I wanted to take a whole lot more pictures, but my urge to just let the bike fly finally overruled and the camera stayed put away.

Back down from Loveland Pass the route normally takes you south of Dillon Reservoir over Swan Mountain, but this year due to quite a controversial closure for car traffic on Dillon Dam Road, the route was changed to send bike traffic over Dillon Dam leaving Swan Mountain Rd to motorists.

After crossing Dillon Dam the new route continued on a recreational path to Frisco Bay Marina. This stretch seemed pretty dangerous as the path isn’t divided in the middle and lots of people were out biking, walking and just enjoying a nice sunny day taking up the whole width of the path, not knowing that 3,500 people were coming their way! I am glad I went through this section early in the day as I can only imagine how it must have become quite the cluster-f*ck later as the masses started coming through. To the benefits of the Triple By-Pass I have to say that all the Triple By-Pass riders I saw going through this section were very strict about staying to the right. We may all have been going a bit too fast for this section, but we tried to stay out of the way.

As the result of the re-route, Aid Station number 4 was moved from the Summit County High School to the Frisco Bay Marina. I made a quick stop here to refill water bottles and eat some bananas and watermelon before heading out on the third and last climb of the day. The climb up to Vail pass is less steep than the previous climbs, but with more than 80 miles and 2 significant climbs already in the legs you are not the least bit in doubt that your climbing. The field had thinned out quite a bit by now and I found myself riding long stretches of the bike path between Frisco and Copper without seeing any other Triple By-Pass riders.

Leaving Copper, the bike path gets a little steeper going up to Vail Pass. Steve caught up to me here again. Steve and I had been leap frogging each other from the very start. We realized that was the case by the time we got to Georgetown so we figured that we might as well introduce each other and be a little more social. It is a social ride after all.

As Steve and I made our way up the bike path towards Vail Pass we were both a little disappointed by the headwind we had been facing since Copper. The last stretch of the Triple By-Pass route from the top of Vail Pass down to Avon can be a blast, but not with a strong headwind the whole way. I knew that from last year’s ride, so we decided that we would hang out for a little while on Vail Pass trying to get a group together in order to paceline it down to the Finish.

It took us about 10 minutes or so at Vail Pass to get a group of 5 folks together for a paceline. It helped that Steve ran into two people he had ridden with before. We started our descent. Steve took the first lead down the road to where the more narrow bike path begins. I took over here and headed up the train all the way down to the bottom of the old Frontage Road. The bike path is pretty curvy as it winds its way around some rock features and I was having a BLAST taking the turns at full speed.

Once down in Vail we caught up to another paceline group of 6 or so riders and we joined up with them flying through Vail and into Avon and the Finish area. I stopped my clock at 7 hours 43 minutes as I rode into the Finish area; about half an hour faster than last year’s ride. Not too bad.

Jen had seen me coming down into Vail as she was making her way to the Finish area after her day of mountain bike riding. I think she missed me by minutes, if not seconds, at the finish area, but we found each other and hung out here for a couple of hours enjoying the sunny day and watching the many riders trickle in.

I had a great ride. I couldn’t have asked for better weather, well maybe less head wind for the finish down Vail Pass, but forming the paceline was the ticket here. As mentioned earlier, this was my third Triple By-Pass ride and I think it was my last, at least for now. It is time for something new.