Passes & Canyons Blog

A portion of the new Roads to Cripple Creek page on the Passes and Canyons website.

For the first time in quite a while I have added a new page to the Passes and Canyons: Motorcycle Touring in Colorado website. The new page focuses on the numerous good motorcycle roads that lead to Cripple Creek, and I have named it “Roads to Cripple Creek.”

I don’t add many pages to the site these days because I’ve basically got it built out. It’s not like the roads in Colorado change all that often. I did add a new page for Guanella Pass when they finally paved that road all the way. But that’s not a common occurrence.

I first started thinking about Cripple Creek when I read somewhere that the high point of the road coming into town from the north, from Divide, is considered Tenderfoot Pass. If it’s a pass, I figured, I ought to have it on the site. But it’s kind of iffy as a pass. There is some more or less official registry of geographic place names in the U.S. and Tenderfoot Pass is not included on this list. And as many times as I have been over that road I never thought of it as a pass.

But then I got to thinking. While the road out of the north does have some good twists and turns, and goes up and down, and has some terrific views in places, it’s really probably not the nicest motorcycle road to get to Cripple Creek. There are others I would rate higher. So how about a page focusing on all of them. That’s what I did.

The other paved road into town is generally considered the back way, coming up in a roundabout manner from U.S. 50 a bit to the west of the Royal Gorge. If you’ve never been on this road you really need to do it. It has some terrific twists and lots of changes in elevation. Definitely better than the main road.

Then there are two gravel roads, both along old railroad beds. One comes directly into Cripple Creek, and that’s the Shelf Road, which comes north out of Canon City. Then the Phantom Canyon Road comes north from U.S. 50 a little to the east of Canon City and runs up to Victor, which is just a few miles east of Cripple Creek. Both of these are really nice, scenic road and are ride-able on street bikes as long as your bike is OK on decent gravel. For instance, I would not hesitate to take my Honda CB750 on them, but I would never consider riding them on my Kawasaki Concours. And of course, my Suzuki V-Strom loves that kind of stuff.

The page is not yet complete; I still need to add photos of these four roads. I have some already and just need to add them. For the others I’m going to have to go ride these roads again and get some shots. Oh the horrible burdens I bear!

Biker Quote for Today

The ride keeps me sane. I would like to call it my church.

A rider on Tenderfoot Pass. Where is that, you say? I’ll get to that some other day.

There was a wise crack going around some time ago about a particularly grisly motorcyclist death where people were saying, “Thank goodness he was wearing a helmet.” That’s pretty much where this latest thing from the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) fits in.

I saw this report, with the title “NTSB calls on states to mandate motorcycle helmets in wake of deadly New Hampshire crash involving impaired West Springfield truck driver” and it’s the same sort of thing. It appears a drunken driver of a pick-up pulling a flat-bed trailer crossed into the oncoming lane and killed seven motorcyclists.

So what does the NTSB do? After investigating they issue a report calling for mandatory helmet laws in every state. Like that totally makes sense.

Don’t get me wrong. I believe in wearing a helmet and always do. However, I also believe in leaving it to the rider to decide. I just don’t think this is the kind of thing government should be dictating. As it was, 12 of the 18 riders in this group were wearing helmets. And the article states that, “NTSB investigators could not conclusively determine the effectiveness of the helmets used by riders in the New Hampshire crash. But the board still voted to recommend that states review and implement motorcycle helmet laws.”

I translate that as “probably most of these people would have died anyway but let’s use this tragedy to push our point of view.” Or, thank goodness some of those dead people were wearing helmets.

The NTSB chairman, Robert Sumwalt, is quoted pulling out the old canard that “someone’s right to ride without a helmet ends at my wallet.” The report says, “NTSB staff and board members also emphasized the societal costs of motorcycle fatalities, citing nearly $9 billion combined in medical costs, lost productivity, EMS services, insurance administrative costs, property damage and workplace losses that may have been avoided in 2017 through universal helmet mandates.”

That argument totally ignores the fact that there are countless things that each and every one of us do that contribute to those same costs, from eating unhealthy food to not exercising to just plain walking down the street. You might get hit by a bus where the driver had a heart attack and the bus veered off onto the sidewalk you were on! Taking that walk was an avoidable behavior that resulted in your injury! Maybe you should have been wearing a helmet when you took that walk.

I say back off. It’s called life.

Biker Quote for Today

They say stress kills. Well, I found the cure. Ride motorcycles.