I rode Cucharas Pass (9941ft) starting from La Veta (7040ft) to Trinidad Lake State Park (6300ft) yesterday. This is one of the most difficult rides I did in a couple of years.
I rode this with my long-time friend and cyclist Sanjay. We picked up this route from Michael Seeberg’s Road Biking Colorado. This is a very scenic route near the Spanish Peaks. You can see the famous dikes along the way.
Here is the Cyclogz log captured by Sanjay with his Garmin.
We started the ride rather late in the day at 10.30am from the town of La Veta. The climb to the Cucharas Pass was decent. From La Veta Route 12 climbs all the way to Cucharas Pass for approximately 16.5. miles. We rode to the pass in about two hours. We took a water break at the town of Cuchara. This is a neat little town. There is a small gift/convenience store here for water and other supplies.
From the pass, the route then descends all the way to Stonewall with a few quick climbs along the way. We had some headwind, and that kept down the speed a bit. There is a large convenience store here and we had another break here.
From Stonewall onwards, although the route profile shows a smooth descent all the way to Trinidad, head winds took care of all the descents bringing the average to about 20mph. The terrain also changes from here from scenic to dry. There are a number of small coal-mining towns along this route.
The most interesting part of the ride were a few quick climbs (~7%) near Trinidad. These come after 60miles of riding, and that is that last thing we wanted, but we climbed eventually. We made it to the Trinidad Lake State Part at about 4.45pm.
My total ride time was about four and half hours for about 62 miles, and my new Orbea Orca handled the climbs very well.
