Peak to Peak Highway Ride
Today I rode sections of the Peak to Peak Highway, starting from Lyons to the intersection of Highways 72 and 93. This is one my best climbing attempts this year with a total ascent of 6000ft over 58 miles. Here is the ride summary.
Peak to Peak Highway is Colorado’s oldest scenic byway. This byway goes from Estes Park to Central City. For logistical reasons, I took a slightly different route starting from Lyons, joining the Peak to Peak Highway after about 14 miles of riding on Highway 7, and then break off from the byway a few miles after Nederland. I rode the section of this byway from Estes Park to Ward a couple of years ago, and so I was not keen on starting from Estes Park again.
When I proposed this route last week, my bike friend Scott Bisbee offered to join. So, we started this ride from Lyons this morning. I planned this route using MapMyRun and it turned out be a great and useful mashup app.
The interesting part of this ride is that once you climb over 8000ft at mile 14, the route stays above 8000ft till Wondervu at mile 50.
The section from Lyons to Ward is very popular, and there were lots of riders today. This is approximately 24 miles long and climbs almost 4000ft peaking at about 9300ft near Ward. Along this way, there are no places to refill water/food. Unless you’re planning to descend into Ward, the only place to fill up is a small restaurant just under a mile before Ward, where the owner offered a full pitcher of ice cold water. If you miss this, the next stop is Nederland, approximately 11 miles away.
This being Scott’s first serious climbing attempt this year, Scott decided to take a detour at Ward and descend via the Left Hand Canyon back to US-36 and Lyons. My legs were feeling extremely good today, and so I decided to continue along.
The section from Ward to Nederland is very scenic. After descending quickly by about 1000 ft over 5 miles, the road climbs again to 8600ft before descending into Nederland (8200ft). I took a quick water break at the Visitor’s Center here. There is a fountain outside the center for water refills and lots of places for food.
From Nederland, Highway 72 and Highway 119 join and climb for about 3 miles back to 8600ft. Here the Peak to Peak Highway continues along 119 for 15 more miles to Central City. Instead of following this, I took a left turn to Highway 72 towards Pinecliff.
This section of Highway 72 turned out be very scenic without much traffic. The road initially descends until it gets to Pinecliff (8000ft, no supplies). There are three steep sections of climb from here to Wondervu (8600ft, supplies). I saw my GPS registering 9% during one of these climbs. It was fun climbing these sections knowing fully well that there is a nice descent waiting just after Wondervu.
From Wondervu till the intersection of Highway 93, the descent is very quick. This section descends rapidly for over 2000 ft in under 10 miles. This being a Saturday, there was a lot of traffic (mostly expensive sports cars) along this section.
My total ride time was just 5 hour 10 min. With today’s tide, I crossed the 1500 mile mark for 2007, 1000 miles of which are over my Orbea Orca.
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