Colorado Trip Day 4 - Wheeler 9.5 miles 2.5hrs climb 20 mins down

Andy and I near the top . A group photo before we turned around

Riders: A B S M

Today was the big Wheeler Ride day . This ride is all about the climb. You start at the bottom of a ski hill where the chair lift starts at the resort. You ride your bike up, up, up and up even more. Once you get to the top of the chair lifts, we still have more climbing to do. I tell you this ride was very hard on me, not really on the body, but mentally.

We start off, we are doing good. Of course Andy and Steve are ahead then Micki and then me. We are about 1 mile into the ride and headed up a long steep section. At this point I am out of gears, I'm in the granny gear that is suppose to be "easy" and well, it was not easy. I am pushing and pushing and then.... I just break down. "I can't make it." I had to blow my emergency whistle. Micki hears it and yells to the guys that something is wrong. Here comes Steve, in his head he is hoping that my bike is broken or something technical had happened, but when he arrived, his worst fear.... I was crying! "I can't do this". Poor Steve didn't know what to do. He pats me on the back and says, "it will be ok this is a hard ride, but he wouldn't take me on something that I couldn't handle." So he talks me back into the game and we start riding again. A little bit up the trail, I say it again... "I can't do it. I will go back and you guys can go on." Steve says "no! I will get you up this mountain." So he actually starts pushing me up a ways. Finally I get into a groove and we are going again. I just was not in the right state of mind for the climb.

We get past the top of the chair lift and there is still more climbing to do. A short time later we are above the timberline. We come to a section that still has snow on it, so we had to hike a bike through the snow to get back to the trail. We continue on and we get to a stopping point and it begins to sprinkle. We are now around 11,500 feet. We have been climbing for 2.5 hours so far and we still had about 45 minutes to another hour left of climbing before we hit the down hill trail. We start again and we see this massive storm start rolling over the mountains coming our way. I get half way up the next switch back and say "that's it...I am done" .....mental break down #3 ... everyone was ok with it this time, because of the storm, so we decided to head back down. At least I hope so.....!?

We start our decent and before we know it we are at the bottom... 2.5 hrs climbing for 20 minutes of down hill. We get down and in the parking lot of where the car are. An MG club was having a car show and had a car wash. So Andy decides to rinse our bikes off. They were very dirty from yesterdays ride and then today in the rain. We go by town to get some soup then back to camp for a nap and relaxation. We were all disappointed that we could not finish the Wheeler ride but, it gives us something to aspire to for next time.

Here is Andy doin' the hike a bike! You can barely see Breckenridge on the left. Top of the world ma!!!