GRAND LAKE — Question of the morning: How cold did you get? 85 miles later the question was where’s the shade? The fourth day of the Ride The Rockies 2016 bicycle tour started with ice on campers’ tents and temperatures in the mid-30s and ended with a cloudless sky and jumps in the Lake Granby on the way to Grand Lake.
Grand Lake, on the western lip of Rocky Mountain National Park, played host to the 31-year-old bicycle tour for the first time Wednesday.
Along the day’s route bicyclists were treated to a frigid morning ride from Copper Mountain to Frisco, a scenic morning ride from Frisco to Dillon, and a easy-compared-to-the-other-passes-climbed-on-this-trip climb up Ute Pass.
The day’s 85 miles included close to 4,000 vertical feet of climbing, the equivalent to riding a bike up Lookout Mountain three times. Certain riders were treated to a bear crossing the rode just past the peak of the day’s main climb up Ute Pass, Ride The Rockies director Chandler Smith said. The rest of us got cows. Maybe a dog or two. This dog looked like it wanted to join the tour:
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