Mt. Blue Sky

If you had told me when I first started biking in 2020 that I would one day bike up a 14er, I wouldn’t have believed it. I’ve never been a strong cyclist. Especially up hills. And honestly, while training for this I was slightly unsure I’d be able to climb for hours at high elevations in order to complete this ride. But I did! And I’m very proud of myself for completing this ride.

Daniel was the mastermind behind the whole idea back in 2023. After we completed BAK, we needed another cycling challenge. We tossed around a few ideas, but riding up the newly renamed Blue Sky sounded like the best one. Unfortunately, Dan couldn’t join us on this adventure (but we’ll get him in on the next one I’m sure!), so it was up to just Daniel and I to complete the challenge.

We both spent the spring working on our climbing ability, definitely a little less than I would have ideally. But I was training for Catalina and it’s hard to train for two big events in different sports. It was fun riding though. I got to do some really beautiful rides in the mountains and tried to build as big of a base as I could to prepare for the big climb. Daniel, the master of routes, mapped out a great route for us starting from Idaho Springs - 55 miles and 6,000ft of gain. It would be tough, but we could do it.

The day of the ride, we woke up at 5am to get an early start on the long day of cycling ahead of us and hopefully avoid all the cars driving up the road. Our ride started in the dark, on the quiet roads of Idaho Springs. It always takes me about 30 minutes to get in the groove of cycling, especially when climbing up hills and today was no exception. The first 30 minutes felt a little rough and I was wondering how I was going to climb 6,000ft in elevation to get to the top of a 14er. But Daniel kept me going and we both fell into a rhythm of steady pedaling.

Our dark morning start

About an hour into our ride, we came across a bathroom on the side of the road. We both decided this would probably be our last chance at a real bathroom until we got to the top so we stopped for a quick break. On the bathroom was a small sticker that said “We can do hard things”. It was just what I needed to see in the middle of this ride. We CAN do hard things. We CAN ride to the top of this mountain. We hopped back on our bikes and kept going up.

At around mile 15, we came up on Echo Lake. Up to this point, we hadn’t seen a single other cyclist on the road. I just figured that it must be because we had gotten such an early start and we would maybe run into others later on in the ride. But when we passed Echo Lake, we also passed a parking lot. Full of people unloading bikes. And it clicked. I looked at Daniel and he gave me a sheepish smile. “Yeah” he said, “Most people start the ride to Blue Sky from Echo Lake, but I kind of wanted to start from Idaho Springs instead. I was hoping you wouldn’t notice.” Honestly, it just made me laugh, this was very typical Daniel. I sighed a little knowing that we could have had a ride with half the distance and half the elevation gain, but it also made me smile knowing we were doing a bit of a harder route than most people were doing that day.

Echo Lake

After we passed the toll booth and hopped onto Mt. Blue Sky Rd, the real challenge began. At this point had 3,000ft of climbing still to go, but all of it would be over 11,000ft in elevation. This was going to be hard. And it was. The wind got stronger as we went up the mountain. The grades got steeper the higher we got. And we both started to feel the fatigue of the hours of the climbing we had already done that day. But it was STUNNING. With each pedal stroke, we were able to see more and more of the scenery and being that high up meant we could see everything.

Scenes from the way up

Of course I found some grass to lay down in for a little bit

We found some snow on the side of the road and iced our legs

After what felt like eternity, we reached the last mile, containing a million switchbacks and still so much up to go. But it was only ONE MILE. I could tell Daniel was excited so I told him to go race up to the top and up he went. I struggled quite a bit (this last mile was by far the hardest part), but finally reached the top to see Daniel waiting by the Mt. Blue Sky sign. We stopped for a moment, to take in the views, let it register that we had made it to the top and of course get some summit photos, but it wasn’t long before we hopped back on our bikes and headed back down.

Daniel snapped this photo of me coming up the last switchback to the summit

Some mountain goats at the top

At the summit!

Now, unfortunately, it was not all downhill from here. I mean yes, literally, it was all downhill, but that came with its own challenges. The road up Blue Sky is not great. There’s tons of potholes and damage, making for a bumpy ride down. All the twists and turns mean you have to go fairly slow but you don’t want to ride your brakes the whole way down. And at this point, a lot of cars had started to make their way up the mountain so we had to watch out for them. Downhill takes a lot of focus.

After a few miles of going down, we rode right past Daniel’s wife Mikki and our friend Emily. A fun surprise on our ride, especially since we weren’t sure they were going to be able to make it up. We zoomed the rest of the way down the mountain, tired and focused but so happy with the feat we had just accomplished.

This was one big ride. I’m so glad that Daniel and I got to this together, I honestly don’t think I could have done it without him. And he made it fun (which is saying a lot because that was quite tough). This was definitely the hardest ride I’ve ever done and I’m so proud of both of us for accomplishing this. It proved to me that I’m more capable on a bike than I really give myself credit for. Here’s to doing hard things.