Steve Smith had asked my assistance in planning his Colorado ride and he sent me this follow-up now that he’s back home. He rode some passes I’ve never been on. Makes it especially interesting. Here’s Steve’s report.

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My trip started in the western North Carolina mountains on Friday, July 3. My dog and I made Oklahoma City that night thru some nice hot weather. Saturday, the 4th, we kept on to New Mexico and up thru Taos to Antonito, Colorado area. I was not sure just exactly where some of the campgrounds were located on your website, so I took the safe route and checked AAA where I found the camp ground at Mogote. The people were nice and had a free cook out that evening. The facilities were nice with a shower and nice shaded camping area for $18.

  Stunner Pass

The next morning I rode past the camp grounds that you mentioned and they looked very nice. My goal was to ride to the pass and find a sign and get a picture, so my first pass that morning was La Manga. It was a nice ride over to Cumbres for my second pass in just 30 minutes or so. I retraced my tracks back across La Manga to the forest road 250 and up to Stunner Pass. This road was very navigable but not recommended for a shiny Harley or Goldwing, due to the rocks and potholes. I was riding a loaded 1150 GS and it was slow going in a few places. As with all the roads in Colorado, they are all very scenic with great vistas. I kept going north up to the highway and made a left turn to Wolf Creek Pass for my 4th pass that day.

The next two passes were easy to achieve on a great road up thru Creede and on to Spring Creek Pass and then Slumgullion Pass for the 5th and 6th passes. Just past Slumgullion towards Lake City I made a right turn towards Los Pinos Pass. This road was even rougher than the road to Stunner but still was very scenic. At this pass the sign had disappeared so I have no picture of that one.

Once thru the pass it was about 29 miles out to Hwy 114 and to North Pass for my 8th pass. A u-turn took me back to Gunnison where I went up thru Crested Butte and on towards Kebler Pass. Before I got to that one there was a road off to the left to Ohio Pass. I found no sign but a nice rocky, pot-holed road for a couple of miles. Kebler was my 10th pass that day and the road on out to Paonia was a very nice gravel road. The aspen surrounding the Lupines and was a sight to behold. That evening I camped at the Redstone campground for $32. Yes I went over McClure Pass but since it was under 10,000 ft, I didn’t count it for that day.

By the end of the day I had ridden over 10 passes above 10,000 feet and was done with the pass counting in 10 hours.

  Los Pinos Road

The next morning, I left Redstone and ventured up thru the slow traffic at Aspen to Independence Pass. Wow, the views were great. My next pass was Tennessee Pass north of Leadville. I retraced my track back to Leadville for lunch and then up to Fremont Pass. I continued north to I-70 over Vail Pass and then on to Shrine Pass, just a short 3 miles from the rest area on a good hard packed road that any bike could handle.

Next in my sights was Loveland Pass and then to Guanella Pass south of Georgetown, but the road was closed for construction so I went to Berthoud Pass instead. That was my last pass, as I told my sister I would be at her house north of Woodland Park at 4 PM. The road down thru Deckers was very nice and I was able to beat or avoid some rain and hail.

My total account was 17 passes over 10,000 ft. I started around 8 AM on July 5th and was drinking a cool one by 4 PM the next afternoon or 32 hours total. In hindsight I could have done more if I wasn’t so packed down and left my dog at home, but we had an excellent ride thru some very beautiful country.

I would not recommend Stunner and Los Pinos Passes for an inexperienced rider. That may be done better in a car or truck. On the other hand, any bike could make it, but it may be missing some parts that get rattled off during the ride.

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OK, so thank you Steve for that ride description. Now I’m going to have to find out where Stunner and Los Pinos Passes are.

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Biker Quote for Today

If it can’t do some dirt, why bother?

Just got in last night from a three-day ride through western Colorado. Never had one heart-pounding moment but I sure had to deal with heat and dehydration. And I paid for trying to walk somewhere in my motorcycle boots.

Keep your bike in good repair: Motorcycle boots are NOT comfortable for walking.

There are so many times I have gone west on I-70 out of Denver and looked longingly at the remnants of the old highway, U.S. 6, that you see in places, wishing I was out of the traffic and over on that nice, twisty piece of two-lane. So I decided to do it. I wanted to see just how much of Colorado’s mountains you could cross on the old highway.

And the answer is, quite a bit. I’ll save the details for another time but it was really nice to cruise along at an easy pace and not have to deal with the interstate traffic. The times when I did have to get on the superslab it was truly unpleasant feeling the need to ride faster and deal with all this even faster traffic whizzing by me. Returning to the two-lane was always a joy.

  A portion of the artwork

Reaching Glenwood Canyon, I knew there were some remnants of the old road accessible from the exits. This canyon is so narrow, however, that they could barely get the interstate in there, much less preserve the old route. There is, however, a good-sized chunk of the old road that you get to off the No Name exit, near the west end of the canyon. There the road curves down alongside the river, but there is a barricade that now blocks motorized vehicles. You can walk or ride your bicycle down there, but no motorcycle.

The road went on around a bend and out of sight, and I wanted to walk down there, but I didn’t want to do that in my heavy boots. So I figured I’d walk just far enough to get a better camera angle. Along the way I met some folks coming back and they told me of an area with picnic tables, a sandy beach, and some clever natural-materials artwork that “some hippie probably smoked a joint and spent the whole day constructing.” Now I was interested.

The fellow told me it was about half a mile down (too far in boots!) but then he also mentioned it in terms of “about 10 minutes.” Ooh, I thought, I can walk 10 minutes in these boots, and 10 back. So off I went.

To make a long story short, I found the art, and it was indeed worth checking out. It’s the sort of thing that a photograph generally does not do justice to, but I’m including two detail shots that give a bit of the idea. Nothing at all like the real thing, unfortunately.

  Another detail

Then it was time to head back. And I hadn’t gone far and I could feel a blister forming on my left heel. Pretty soon I knew it was going to be a very unpleasant walk unless I could do something about the blister. I had a notebook with me so I tore out a sheet, folded it, and stuck it inside my sock where the blister was. It was amazing. I could now walk without any discomfort at all.

About the time I was 40 feet from the bike, however, the sweat-soaked paper was no longer offering protection and another blister was forming on my right heel. I gritted it out and was really happy to get back on the bike. Then I stopped at the first place I could find in Glenwood Springs and bought Band-Aids and switched to my sneakers. The moral, don’t ever try to walk far in motorcycle boots.

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Biker Quote for Today

The road is only open when you ride alone.

An interesting news report about the Fort Collins Chief of Police. He was up on Stove Prairie Road and went down on his buddy’s Road King. He suffered a broken pelvis but got back on the bike and rode into town to the hospital.

“It was very apparent something was really wrong,” said Chief Dennis Harrison.

Yeah, I guess. Call me a wuss but I think I would have waited for the ambulance. Oh, and no mention about the condition of the bike.

No place is a good place to go down but Chief Harrison did pick a nice place to ride. I’ve been on that road many times and I strongly recommend it. What it is best is a way to avoid going through all the sprawl of Fort Collins when you’re on your way up the Poudre Canyon. The Stove Prairie Road runs over the ridge from the Buckhorn Canyon to the Poudre. Here’s a map showing the area.

What you do is head west out of Loveland on US 34, like you’re going up to Estes Park, except just a bit west of town, as you get past the hogback, you go north on CO 56 to Masonville. At Masonville you go left at the T intersection. Right takes you down by Horsetooth Reservoir and into Fort Collins. Left takes you up the Buckhorn.

You don’t need to worry about finding the Stove Prairie turnoff because that’s the way the pavement goes. Where the Buckhorn road and the Stove Prairie road diverge the Buckhorn road turns to gravel. So stay on the pavement.

The road rises up to the tiny community of Stove Prairie and then heads down into the Poudre. A left takes you up the Poudre on CO 14, over Cameron Pass, and down into North Park. A right takes you very quickly to the Mishiwaka Inn, the best bar in these parts, and then down to hit US 287 just a couple miles outside of LaPorte.

There’s one other good riding option you might want to be aware of, and that is the Rist Canyon road. From up on top, at Stove Prairie, the Rist Canyon road (Larimer County Road 52E) takes you directly down into LaPorte. Once you come over the crest it is a very steep downward run that is reminiscent of coming into Golden on the Lookout Mountain road.

It’s all good riding. But you’ll enjoy it more if you keep the rubber side down.

Biker Quote for Today

Never ride faster than your guardian angel can fly.

Man, have I got a lot of work ahead of me. If you have gone through the Passes and Canyons, Motorcycle Touring in Colorado website thoroughly you know that even three years in it is still weak in information on some roads. The simple fact is that although I’ve been all over this state numerous times, there were some places I had not been back to since I started the website. Therefore, although I could show a map and talk a little about the route, I did not have the photos and other information I routinely collect and post.

Well, that’s about to change. The OFMC trip last week could not have been better tailored to meet my needs if I had planned the route myself with that in mind–which I did not do. I had made a list some time ago of 27 places I needed to get to. On this trip I hit 15 of those spots. It’s going to take time to work through it all but in the next few weeks you can expect to see improvements on a lot of pages, including:

• Colorado 92 from Hotchkiss to the Blue Mesa Reservoir
• Colorado 65 across Grand Mesa
• McClure Pass
• Monarch Pass
• Red Mountain Pass
• Slumgullion and Spring Creek Passes
• Wolf Creek Pass

And more. Here’s a map showing our route. What a great ride we had.

Biker Quote for Today

The ride IS the destination.