Winding Down from Bicycling... Gearing Up for Backpacking

I arrived in Estes Park the day before yesterday and had a nice rest day yesterday.  I've firmed up the plans for the rest of my trip (through September 11) and, I'm almost at the end of bicycling -- I'll have two more days of riding as I backtrack down to Denver over the Labor Day Weekend.

The day after tomorrow, I'm headed out for 5 days of backpacking.  Along the bicycle portion of the trip, I would often look up into the mountains and say to myself "wouldn't it be cool if I could go back a little further into the backcountry than is possible on the bicycle."  This backpacking trip will let me experience a little bit of that!

Intense Climbs!

The last few days have involved the most intense uphills of the trip. From Cañon City to Colorado Springs was 65 miles virtually all uphill, then coming out of Denver I took 72 up Coal Creek Canyon which was really steep. This morning I rode Flagstaff Road, the most incredibly twisted road with tons of 180 switchbacks, down out of the mountains and into Boulder. Thank goodness I was going down, although I saw many bicyclists who were going up. One (or two, maybe) more rides up to Estes Park to go!

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