Pilgrimage to Radical Hill

I’d seen this one road, perched high up on the side of an apline ridge, twice in my life, on two previous rides. From my vantage point it looked hilarious: carved into the side of the mountain in a zig-zag pattern that barely clung to the steep pitches that it traversed. In my mind I thought that it was perhaps no longer a “road”, but the remnant of a road, washed away by time, but the scar still visible.

In my mind I resolved to go back someday, and to find out what was up there on that road, if it was indeed a road. Better yet, I’d find out what laid beyond it, on the other side, in the alpine.

Summer is, in fact, alpine season in Colorado. For three to four short months, the snow recedes long enough to allow safe passage through the most rarified terrain in the state: the carpets of summer grasses, wildflowers, and treeless expanses found above eleven or twelve thousand feet of elevation. Everything is more beautiful in the alpine. The vistas are larger, wide open. The mountains are un-cloaked by forests, and show off their dramatic topography with pride. When I imagine Colorado in my head, I don’t imagine the lower sections of the state that are drier, almost desert-like at times. Instead I imagine these very places, the emerald crown jewels of the state.

The price of admission is high in these parts. From our starting point in Breckenridge, Colorado, it wasn’t more than a few miles before we were greeted by our first pitch: A mile of 15-22% gradients that sucker punched our legs, hearts, and lungs before they had even begun to warm up to the challenge ahead. To our credit, we knew what we were in for, and our attitudes were up to the task. We put our heads down and started chewing through the ascent, both on the bike and on foot.

Clouds gathered overhead, signaling impending and inevitable thunderstorms incoming. Colorado does this predictably many afternoons, and even more so in the summer monsoon season during which this ride took place. We had an ambitious route planed for the day, but having experienced the wrath of alpine weather on a number of rides before this, we decided to trim our ambition and optimize it for a single objective: We really just wanted to see that mysterious road on that high ridge.

The higher you get in places like this, the worst the road surface gets, but not in a linear way, it’s exponential decay. For sure at some point these were probably decent mountain tracks, freshly cut, maintained by nobody but miners intent on extracting vast wealth from the ore buried in these surrounding peaks. I find many parallels in early miners and people who start companies in the bike business: Early on enthusiasm and optimism is sky high. Creativity overflows, energy is in excess. Both miners and bike purveyors are certain of one thing: Success. But, generally speaking, time is not kind to miners or bike companies. Slowly, or also quickly and suddenly at times, both spend their optimism, energy, and creativity into deficit until the only remaining move is to close the mine, or the shop, and retreat back down the mountains to the safety of the lowlands. The views aren’t great in the lowlands, but there is far less danger of death by lightning, avalanche, or bankruptcy.

Even after retreat, and outside of metaphor, the miners leave a gift to us bikers: These old roads. They may be shadows of their former selves, almost not worth traversing at all by bike when hiking boots might be a more pragmatic choice. But we still traverse them by bike because we’re still full of optimism, energy, and route building creativity.

Clouds built, bikes hiked, lungs burned. The silliness of these rides cannot be under-emphasized. We tend to invite very few people along when we undertake outings like this because there are so few people that I can imagine truly enjoying going on bike rides where much of the time you aren’t riding your bike at all. But those who get it, get it. It isn’t about miles per hour on days like this, it’s more about being amongst and above these dramatic peaks. It’s about getting to the mountain under your own power, ascending under your own power, and returning to your origin under your own power. At times you’ll be zipping along at an easy cadence, at times your cranks will turn over like the tired piston of a Casey Jones steam locomotive. At times there simply won’t be a right gear, and off the bike you go, shuffling along at about a mile per hour pace. Rides like this are more about being than doing.

The top does come, and when it does you celebrate. If you’re lucky, your celebration is joined by native mountain goats. The mere sight of them is impactful and awesome. They’re just so confident and at home up here. They aren’t intimidated by you; you look so tired that you couldn’t possibly be a predator. Whatever you endured to get up here, they’ve endured times a thousand, and they aren’t bothered by it at all. You’d never find mountain goats down in the lowlands, because of course nature and biology, but also the lowlands just aren’t badass enough for mountain goats.

Once up high with the goats, we achieved peer status with the peaks around us. We looked across at them, not up at them. They were amazing, just absolutely amazing. Even so, we weren’t quite at that spot in the map with that improbable looking road. We had a bit of undulating ridge to traverse, and the boom of thunder to the northeast told us to hurry up, get there, and begin descending.

We finally found ourselves perched on the ridge above the rugged dirt road that had for years been burning a hole in the back of my brain. From our vantage point now at the top, it was no less dramatic than it was at the bottom. Visually it was a gorgeous set of switchbacks cutting its way across the face of the bowl, emptying into a basin below. It looked inviting, and we were excited to dive in and ride it.

But the road, which we have since learned is named Radical Hill, had one more trick up its sleeve for us, it was so raw, so degraded, and so steep, that we would have to earn the descent much the same way we had earned the ascent: Slowly but surely.

There are few moments on a ride like this where you can let loose your brakes and fully rip. Our rigid bikes, optimized for “come what may”, are rarely fully at home in any single terrain style, be that road, or gravel, or treacherous mountain scree field roads. So instead of ripping down the mountain, we finessed our way down. Lines were picked carefully, weight fully back, and gaze fully fixed. Logan, who has been on a number of these sorts of rides, exclaimed that Radical Hill was the new standard by which sketchy drop bar descents are now defined.

We descended and re-grouped, descended and re-grouped. Two flat tires were offered on the altar of the peaks around us, before being repaired, ride resuming. With the loss of elevation came improving road surface. The two are always inversely proportional. Soon, instead of picking lines through chunky boulders, we were ripping down rain-wet roads, and eventually the familiar predictability of pavement.

The shade of the skies wasn’t a warning, it was a promise. Eventually the clouds let loose their heavy cargo onto us and we were quickly drenched. But it wasn’t a punitive drenching. I think of it more as the skies letting us know that our traverse had been noted and allowed. We’d touched the alpine and made it down safe, full of stories, views, and the exhilaration of our present experience.

I “penned” the following for our social media post about this ride, but this shorter summary bottles this experience up into a tiny tincture of a day.

Alpine days are the days when the rule book gets thrown out. We pick a place that we want to go, a hole in the map that needs to be filled. We try to draw the most sensible line we can come up with, but quite often the word sensible ends up on the floor next to the rule book. Gradients go sky high. The road is swept away by snow and rain, leaving the eroded hubris of the person who first tried to carve it into the mountain, way back in the day. Often our progress is measured in 30 second bursts, because the air is so thin, and the heart doth protest. Even at that, progress is made. A saddle comes into view high above, and when you’re not looking directly at it, it gets closer. The summit is always there, waiting. At times you’re also greeted by the white bearded natives, who stare at your folly and puzzle at your exhaustion. What business do you have on their lawn? We’re just here to admire, really. We just want to see what you see. We want these views for ourselves, stored safely for future recall.

The best bike rides are pure folly. The best bike rides involve some hiking. The best bike rides aren’t soon forgotten.