SALIDA — In the adventure-sports world, the description “epic” is often tossed around as a casual feel-good cloak for a more harsh reality. Given a dose of truth serum, an “epic ride,” for instance, translates more accurately to “brutal” or “wicked.”
And so it was in downtown Salida at 10 p.m. Saturday, when Armageddon seemed imminent on the eve of the annual epic known as the Vapor Trail 125. Lightning slashed the Collegiate Peaks towering above town, and a stream of rainwater from the summer’s hardest deluge turned the landmark F Street Bridge into a cascading tributary nearly as large as the Arkansas River beneath it.
The good news for the 40 handpicked mountain bikers scheduled to start their overnight ride from the bridge to the other side of the Great Divide and back again was that the conditions called for a shortening of the traditional 125-mile route to a mere 108 miles, eliminating some 3,000 vertical feet of climbing from the original 20 grand, topping out at an elevation of 12,600 feet.
Perhaps less appealing was the forced postponement of the start to the witching hour of midnight, the dominion of gremlins lurking in the night somewhere along the so-called Vapor Trail.
Overcaffeinated riders spent the delay buzzing around the sponsoring Absolute Bikes shop bleeding off energy in the form of late-night tunes. A few donned layers of duct tape to close vents in their shoes, but, on the surface, at least, many appeared underprepared for the inconsiderate elements before them.
“Just about anything could happen,” said Tom Purvis, co-founder of the original 2005 Vapor Trail 125 race that has since morphed into a U.S. Forest Service approved “group training ride” and benefit for Salida Mountain Trails with competitive undertones. “It’s just a celebration of suffering, I guess.”
The hairy brainchild of Absolute Bikes owner Shawn Gillis and co-worker Purvis, the linked maze of singletrack, old mining roads and abandoned railroad grades is more accurately a showcase of suffering. The Salida-based loop over four mountain passes may very well constitute the state’s most difficult single-day ride, although separating the parts into a more mortal three-day effort highlights the vast and varied fat-tire terrain spanning the San Isabel and Gunnison National Forests surrounding nearby Monarch Pass.
“The idea of the event was to showcase some of the great singletrack that’s here in Salida,” Gillis said. “A lot of times you go to an event and say, ‘That was a really fun race course, but not something I would go out and ride.’ This is something that you want to go out and ride.”
Although the lack of entry fees and formal timekeeping help eradicate the ride’s race status, the more significant differential from overnight events such as the 24 Hours of Moab comes in the grand loop course design. Rather than a short circuit returning to the relative comfort of a base camp, the Vapor Trail sends cyclists off into the wild between volunteer-manned aid stations.
Course designers went out of their way to include the renowned Monarch Crest Trail as the crown jewel of the layout, capping off the overnight effort with a sweet singletrack descent decorated on Sunday with fresh snowmelt and dewdrops shimmering from fir trees like tinsel on Christmas morning.
Of course, most bikers drive cars to the pass summit rather than ride over three mountains in the night.
“You still appreciate how fun the riding is out there, even if it’s cold and you are riding at a race pace,” said Josh Tostado of Alma, the first to finish the loop, in about 10 hours, 43 minutes. “This ride really epitomizes Colorado because of all the different terrain. You start at 7,000 feet and you go up above 12,000, so you really go through a lot of different types of mountain biking. There’s a lot of different dirt, a lot of different forest, so it covers a lot of different Colorado mountain biking, which is pretty cool.”
As to the name Vapor Trail, it emanates from the multiple railroad grades incorporated into the loop. The reference is to the fumes puffing out of the old locomotives, although it might just as easily apply to the ethereal clouds hovering on the ridges above 11,000 feet, or the reality that riders are guaranteed to be gassed at the finish, wherever that may be.
For more than half of the group Sunday, that would be far from the trail’s actual end. A significant chunk of the field dropped out of the event well before sunrise. Others faded in the face of Monarch Pass. John Fulton, the final biker to arrive at the post-ride BBQ at Gillis’ house, completed his tour after just more than 18 hours in the saddle.
“It doesn’t sound like fun to some people, but I think the best way to put it is ‘self-exploration.’ You confront things when you are out for the night and into the next day. You’re hungry and cold, trying to keep yourself fed and safe even though you might wind up a little goofy. It’s a different way to experience the Rocky Mountains, for sure,” said Purvis, a first-time finisher in 17:40. “There’s no way that it can be less than overwhelming to anyone, even the fastest guys.”
Scott Willoughby: 303-954-1993 or swilloughby@denverpost.com
