James and I embarked on a 2 day ride to circumnavigate Pikes Peak on Saturday morning, August 17th. We started from our house and would use the current segments of the official Ring the Peak trail system, and link them up as seamlessly as possible in-between the official segments. The route would take us counterclockwise around the mountain. The purpose of the trip was to have fun together doing something we'd wanted to do for a long time, explore some new areas around Pike's, and to take our new bikes on a christening event.
The beautiful weather, meadows, and flowy single-track gave us both riders-high on day 2.
On the south side of Pikes is an incredible collection of rocks called Cathedral Park. It's breathtaking. We couldn't stay and play, though, because we had to do our final big climb of the trip which would take us up to an exposed 11,400 feet and bad looking clouds were quickly approaching. | We beat the weather, barely, and began our rewarding descent. |
We successfully biked (and enjoyed) the entire RTP trail and celebrated over some good BBQ. Ahhh....real food!