After 8 years, I finally made it to the last of the real mountain towns in the West, Telluride, Colorado. In my opinion, Telluride is the closest we can get to a European town in the Alps. Quite literally at the dead end of a box canyon, surrounded by walls of the San Juan mountains, piercing the sky. With snowfields and glaciers covering the summits. Sure, is the town comically unaffordable for anyone who actually wants to live there, yes, but it still does exist. And there are a handful of locals that still make this town as unique as it ever was after the mining boom went dry. Now, this little tourist/ski town is home to about 2,400 locals and sits at an elevation of 8,700, with the surrounding peaks quickly climbing to over 12,000ft. In the summer, there’s endless opportunities to hike, mountain bike, climb, and ride your off-readers & motorbikes over Black Bear Pass from Ouray. In the winter, this little town is home to some of the gnarliest skiing terrain in the country, both inbounds and in the backcountry. Outside of the Alps, this is by far the first time I’ve seen an American mountain town and had my jaw drop to the floor, and thought, “Damn, now those are some serious mountains!”
This past summer, my wife, Courtney, our dog, Gregor, and I rolled into town for the weekend for Courtney’s running race. The Box Canyon race was a 10 Mile climbing race that headed up Bear Creek and eventually climbed nearly 4,000 ft, way up onto the Telluride Ski Resort, before descending back down underneath the Gondola’s route to town. A hell of an intense race, and luckily, Gregor and I could take the Gondola up to the ridgeline to cutout most of the vert to meet Court at the halfway point. Crushing the race, she even beat us back downhill to town. To celebrate an epic day in the mountains, we wandered up and down the old mining town that had millions of dollars worth of gold and minerals extracted from it. Completely detached from the town it once was, this tourist ski town has changed like many others in the west after the mines no longer became profitable.
The following morning after the race, feeling a bit hungover from a late night of trying all the beers in town. I set off for a big mountain bike training ride in town. I say training ride, because I was training for the Point 2 Point mountain bike race at the end of summer. If I wasn’t training for something I probably wouldn’t have gotten out of bed, and best case, rode lift laps from the gondola and avoided pedaling as best I could. But there I was, pedaling uphill through the quiet, empty town in the early hours, with the overcast skies lingering just above the mountain peaks. A weather forecast that was both concerning and welcomed. Sure, there was a fear of high alpine thunderstorms, but at least I wasn’t going to get roasted by those high altitude Colorado solars.
On the trail map, the route seemed to be a normal ride, totaling around 16 miles, climbing around 4-5K feet, and looping right back around to town. This was going half the distance of a normal “big” ride in Park City that I’ve completed over the years and thought nothing of it. The descent on them map looked pretty fun, having me ride both Black and Double Black trails before hitting the main trail again. And the topo map seemed to indicate I’d be hanging out in the valleys as I circumnavigated a section of the San Juan range. Sure, I noticed the directional climbing trail was rated as a Black trail, which I ignored, and proceeded off with as much water as I could carry in my running vest and a whole lot of Honey Stingers. What’s the worst that could happen?
Well, off to a great start on Legacy bike path out of town. My right pedal making a horrendous creaking sound that I had felt coming on for a few rides, but did nothing with that information. I tried to fiddle with it, but figured it was internal, leaving me with two options: 1, turn around back to the hotel, back up and leave. Or 2, say screw it, and push on with an annoyingly creaky pedal and see how it goes. Choosing the ladder of the two, I proceeded uphill, piercing the morning air with a mechanical shrill every pedal stroke. Luckily I was by myself, otherwise my friends would have thrown my bike off a cliff.
The road quickly transitioned to gravel in the Valley View parking load at base of the switchbacks to Black Bear pass. Luckily, I wasn’t climbing the entire road up and over the pass, but only about a dozen switchbacks before it reaches the top of Bridal Veil Falls. Worth a trip alone, these falls are world class-level of beautiful. Atop the falls is an old building that once was the hydropower generation plant for the mining operations below. The road itself up was rather uneventful, steep, but a normal dirt road in the mountains. Probably much more exciting for the Denver crowds taking their brand new, $70K Ford Broncos off the pavement for the first time. For the real fun began when I hit the Bridal Veil Basin trail, or should I say the most painful double-track climb I’ve had the pleasure of riding.
For the next 4.6 miles, I would get to experience the joys of a trail that has the most sustained difficult climbing I’ve ever seen. Not a secret by any means either, since the comments on this trail are littered with notes like, “…had to hike my bike for 50% of it.” Or, “…beautiful scenery, too difficult to ride most features.” Or my favorite, “… not a great bike trail, better to just hike it.” All of which would have been great beta before the hungover ride started, none of which did I read until afterwards. And all those comments were spot on correct. Too bad I was ignorant to these realities, and found myself thinking everyone could ride these trails, so I was absolutely redlining every feature in hopes to crawl up it and not have to hike my bike.
The trail, or in reality, an old service road from the mining days, was a loose, rocky mess. That either had small step-up climbs or sustained gradients uphill, either way, was riding in 1st or 2nd gear for most of it. Beauty was one thing this trail did not lack. Towering peaks above tree line lined both sides of the trail as far as you could see. The trail paralleled a stream in the base of this drainage, and the trail map indicated hanging lakes all around on the mountainsides, though they were too high up to really see. For I was focused on finding the most efficient line through the chunky sections that were never 20ft apart from one another.
At a crawling pace, the 4.6 miles turned what I thought would be a single hour, into multiple hours. And though some of the switchbacks were “navigable”, I was dumping too much energy into each pedal stroke to stay upright and keep my forward momentum. Halfway up the trail, as it started opening up into the Bridal Veil Basin, I finally realized the root cause of why this trail was so difficult. The elevation. Coming from Park City, Utah, I am regularly recreating between 7K and 10K elevation, and rarely think anything of it. It did not occur to me that the start of this trail, down by Bridal Veil Falls, sat at a modest 10,300ft in elevation. And the top of this climb crested at 13K feet, on the shoulder of Oscar’s Peak.
Needless to say, I did not account for this and my body, I’ve come to realize over the years, has a difficult time above 12K feet. This became such a source of mental frustration, as I’d see very manageable climbs ahead, and know that I was, once again, going to be off my bike pushing it up the hill. This is my least favorite way to mountain bike. Walking uphill in my minimalist gravel cycling shoes, slipping on rock after rock, not getting any fitter on my mountain bike training, and ultimately going as slow as a turtle’s sprint. But eventually, hours longer than I expected, and one great conversation with bikepackers effortlessly riding through with a bike 2x heavier than mine, I made it up to the pass and it was time to let gravity take over and the fun to begin.
The funny thing about elevation, if you’ve never experienced it, is that the exhaustion and fatigue you “feel”, immediately goes away when you catch your breath or start going back downhill. Which is the biggest mental hurdle when you’re still trying to make your way up and think you’re all good again. But going downhill, especially on a bike, is pure joy. The heart rate comes way down, the attention, focus, and field of view return, and I was flying down the upper Wasatch Trail, which was an old, narrow hiking trail into the Bear Creek drainage. Picking up my head, town was just out of view behind the Telluride ski resort to the north. The trail itself, was gnarly. Steep, technical, and rocky. The switchbacks were so tight you either had to slide them, cut the corner, or Euro-style turn on the front wheel with your back wheel in the air. The loose rock also made it nearly impossible to actually go slow, so I just had to settle in with a flyer of a lap and let the suspension on my bike go to work.
Thankfully I had the warmup on the upper Wasatch Trail, because jumping over to the East Fork Bear Creek Trail, I was absolutely pushing myself and my bike to the limit. The skree rocks going into steep corners with exposure on the other side of said corner, had me a little puckered to say the least. Some sections choked out to a narrow, committing chute, that would eat up your bike if you missed the line. At one point, I had an audience of hikers stoked to see me attempt a scrambling hiking section. Only for me to disappoint when I got stuck halfway through and had to hike-a-bike through the 2nd portion. But after this section, the trail meets back up with the technical portion of the Wasatch Trail again, and this was high speed, tons of tech as it hugged the sides of the mountain.
The best beta I can share, I received from the two hard tail bikepackers I met earlier, who told me to look for a hidden trail junction when you ride out onto the crowded Bear Creek trail to avoid all the traffic. This was spot on, a new trail had just been cut in and was a flowing, true mountain bike built trail that paralleled the main thoroughfare. Such a contrast front the day of struggling up steep, loose, rocky terrain, this loamer trail was just fun from top to bottom. From there, it was back out into town to find where Courtney had parked the Jeep for the morning, which I found them hanging out in the creek that is technically the San Miguel River in town. A perfect way to cool off and end an exhausting day in the mountains on my bike!
My name is Zachary Kenney and for the past 14 years I’ve been writing stories about my adventures.
My passion is to share experiences through writing or filmmaking that will hopefully get you out of the house to have an adventure you can call your own.
Currently based in the Park City, Utah (or my van… or out in the mountains somewhere)
