Passes & Canyons Blog

With a near-record high temperature and forecasts for snow–finally–in just a couple days I wanted to get into the hills for perhaps the last time this year. And gosh, I never have to decide what bike to ride anymore, it’s always the V-Strom.

The quickest, most direct route is to get on Hampden (also known as US 285) just a couple blocks north of home and heat straight west. But I’ve been that route a thousand times so I often look for something else. I didn’t really know just where I was headed so I went south on Yosemite to Arapahoe and then west. Yeah, I’ve been that route plenty, too, but not as much as Hampden. Then Arapahoe ends at Broadway so I turned south on Broadway.

My thought was to get onto C-470 and go west but when I got to Mineral I realized that if I have ever been on that particular stretch of Mineral it was only once and I have forgotten it. So great! A new road to ride. And no, it did not look at all familiar. With a metropolitan area as large as Denver’s, you can be surprised to find how many roads you’ve never been on. You get to explore in town.

I got past Santa Fe and crossed the Platte and it was all undeveloped and really pretty. I guess this must be floodplain and will never get built on. We can hope. By the time I reached Kipling I was back on a portion of Mineral I have been on. I pushed on west all the way over to C-470 as it comes north now and expected to have to take it north or south but found that Mineral feeds directly into the mouth of a small canyon. Great, I’ll keep going.

Then I recognized it. This is part of Ken Caryl Ranch and we have family living out here. I took the road going south a little past C-470–South Valley Road–and realized I had accidentally done a great job of navigating. As I had been cruising along Mineral I had figured out a tentative route and that included going up Deer Creek Canyon Road. Well, South Valley Road goes south through a beautiful valley with lots of gorgeous rock formations and open space and meets up with Deer Creek Canyon Road. Couldn’t have done better if I’d planned it that way.

I turned up Deer Creek Canyon Road and a lot of other bikers had chosen this same road. No matter whether they were going the same direction I was or the other direction, they all blasted past me. I was just not in a hurry. I was interested in savoring this gorgeous day. Unlike when I’d been up this way last week, this time I did not take the turn onto South Deer Creek Road but kept going on Deer Creek Canyon Road up and over the top and down to South Turkey Creek Road. I went east a short distance till I made the turn onto North Turkey Creek Road, headed toward Evergreen.

Then again, unlike my other ride last week, I did not turn up High Drive but stayed on the Turkey Creek road, all the way up to CR 73, which runs between Conifer and Evergreen. At this point in the day, deep in the canyon there were a lot of places with bright sunshine followed by deep shade. You can’t see a thing in the shaded area so as you approach it you hope there is no sharp turn as soon as you get into what you cannot now see. On top of that, on the right-handers there is a lot of gravel thrown up onto the road by cars that cut the corner a bit too tight. So the real nightmare is plunging into the shadows and finding yourself faced with a sharp right turn and a lot of gravel on the road.

Fortunately that was not the case usually but in at least one spot that was exactly what I encountered, and this particular spot had more gravel than any other place I saw. It’s times like that when you really ought to be taking it easy. I was, but boy did I see a lot of guys–on sportbikes mostly–who were riding pretty aggressively. Not for me, thanks.

So I made it on up to Evergreen and turned down Bear Creek Canyon to Morrison. Then I cut over to US 285 and turned east for home. Wow, did I have a nice ride! And now the weather is already turning colder and we’ll see if this snow arrives as predicted.

Biker Quote for Today

Bikers don’t follow the crowd; they make their own path.

I mentioned that we are looking at our latest first snow of the season ever–sooner or later–and here is an indication of what it’s like. I went riding Tuesday, November 4, starting out with a clean visor. By the time I got home I needed to clean the visor because it was all smeared with bug guts. That’s right. I hit not one but a whole bunch of bugs . . . in November. And the biggest and fattest one was less than a mile from the highest point I got to on this ride. Crazy.

Tuesday was supposed to be quite warm but cloudy, while Wednesday was to be a bit cooler but sunny and clear. I figured Wednesday might be the better day to ride but when my Tuesday appointment got canceled I figured I might as well ride both days. So I set out and got about half a block when I realized I had intended to clean my visor. Oh well, I’ll do that some time when I stop. But then I realized I also had intended to check my air pressure. Fine, I was just half a block from home, I turned around.

I definitely needed air, as I was sure I would, and it was nice to have a clean visor. Because I was heading straight on into the mountains, I blasted west on Hampden/US 285, and went up past the Tiny Town exit to the North Turkey Creek Road turn-off. The idea was to complete the ride I started the day before, the route I plan to lead an RMMRC ride on.

Only a short way up Turkey Creek I came to High Drive and made the right. With some very tight turns on the way up (10 mph recommended), this road goes up into an area of woods, lined with houses, many quite large. The road goes up and over and then comes down just outside of Evergreen, where it meets CR 73 coming up from Conifer. It was great. From the moment I got off US 285 till the time I came down into Evergreen I never had a single other vehicle in front or in back of me. And just a few going the other direction. Nice, leisurely riding.

So that completed my planned route, except that I’m figuring to take the group down from Evergreen to a restaurant in Kittredge for lunch. But I didn’t want to go that way this day so I hooked a left and took Evergreen Parkway over to Bergen Park and then went left on CR 45, which brings you out to I-70 up near the top of Floyd Hill. I didn’t want to get on the interstate so I stayed on old US 40, which is essentially a frontage road for the interstate along this stretch, and then down the steep back side of Floyd Hill into Clear Creek Canyon and US 6.

At the junction I went right, to go down Clear Creek to meet up with the Peak to Peak Highway. It had been quite warm all this while, with no sign of the clouds that had been predicted, but down in the bottom of this steep canyon it quickly got very cold. Time to flip on the electric vest.

At the Peak to Peak I went left, toward Black Hawk. Considered stopping for lunch but didn’t. Oh, and so, all this way I had periodically been wiping smeared bugs off my visor. Weird.

I cruised up through Black Hawk and kept going, on up to the turn-off from the Peak to Peak down Golden Gate Canyon. And it was along here I hit the big guy. Now I really needed to clean my visor. The ride down Golden Gate Canyon was pretty much as it always is. Some traffic but not a lot, and several nice stretches with lots of small curves that you can easily straighten out with a bike. That’s always fun.

Then I hit Golden, turned south on CO 93 down to 285 and then east to home. I’m loving this. After being off the bike for so long this is just sweet.

Biker Quote for Today

100 reasons not to date a biker: 74. Doubling the speed limit ain’t no thing.

I’ve been doing a lot of RMMRC rides lately, which of course is the reason I joined the group, to have someone to ride with besides the OFMC guys, who do one big trip a year but little else. Most recently, I met the guys for a semi-regular Wednesday morning impromptu ride.

These impromptu rides are unplanned, it’s just a matter of meet for breakfast and then see what ideas different folks have in mind. Last week Dave was figuring he needed to pre-ride a route planned for Saturday through Walden and Rocky Mountain National Park. That was more than the rest of us were looking for so we bid him farewell and took a different route. I’m not sure whose idea it was but we headed out C-470 and up Deer Creek Canyon for starters.

About two-thirds of the way up Deer Creek we made a left onto a road I had explored once before, which appears to be called Pleasant Park Road. It’s hard to believe that was already five years ago that I went up that way but that link to my post then shows the date as October 2014.

Pleasant Park Road was better than I remembered it, so this was a good choice by whoever was leading. It’s really twisty, and does a good bit of climbing. The one thing to watch out for if you go this way is that there is a lot of gravel right smack in the middle of some of the tightest curves. The guys in front of me were whipping right along but I chose to slow down.

This road comes out to U.S. 285 a bit west of Conifer and we turned right, headed back toward town. However, at Turkey Creek Road we turned left and headed on up that twisty, winding canyon for more fun riding. When we reached Jefferson County Road 73, which runs from Conifer over to Evergreen, we pulled off for a stop.

“What do you guys want to do now, head back or go somewhere else?” was the question put forth. The consensus was to head back to town but hey, let’s all swing by BMW of Denver. OK.

That’s when one of the guys (whose name, embarrassingly, I still don’t know) exclaimed happily, “This is exactly the kind of group I wanted to find–a bunch of guys who are happy to just go out and ride somewhere and have a good time without having any plans.” (Or words to that effect.)

I couldn’t agree more. In the early days of the OFMC that’s exactly what we used to do. None of this planning a route and making reservations. John and Bill and I would get together and say “which direction do you want to go?” and then we’d make it up along the way. Those days are long gone.

So we headed on back to town but I peeled off before heading to the BMW shop. I don’t have one of those so that was of no interest to me. But I sure enjoyed the ride.

Biker Quote for Today

Sometimes the road you travel doesn’t lead to the destination you had hoped for. But if you can look back on the trip and still smile . . . then it was worth it.