Mount Evans!

Week four is complete! In a way im really excited that we are already in Denver but in a way im sad. We are leaving the mountains.... We are all (all of us that like climbing) convinced that the rest of the ride is going to be kinda boring.... hmmm we will have to find things to make it exciting.. (not that we dont already)

Anywaysssss this week has been pretty good. Lots and lots of mountains and even trees in some places! Everyday this week with the exception of friday was about 85 to 90 miles (in canadian thats about... 135-150km) Friday was 35 miles (55km) Friday was greatly appreciated and a much needed break. We goofed off all day, stoping for breakfast and taking lots of pictures and then went swimming when we got to camp. Then I had a phone interview about the tour and poverty with a radio station. It went really well. It was nice to have a bit of a break from cycling and not have another 6 hour day in the saddle.

Yesterday comes was one of my favourite days of the tour if not the favourite. The tour route had us doing about 140km with one, 3,000ft climb and get up to our highest elevation of the tour of over 11,000ft. The day had net elevation of -3,000ft (meaning we go down 3,000 more ft then we go up :D) not by any means an easy day but very do able. To make things a little more challenging Tyler found out that there is a mountain off route that would be..."fun" to climb. This mountain, called Mount Evans boasts the highest road in North America and the highest paved road in the world! As soon as i heard about this i pretended to contemplate it when really i knew i had to at least attempt it. How often do you get the chance to do something so epic? We had a couple of talks between us crazy people and figured out in total we would do an extra 80km and over 7,000 extra feet of climbing. Then we raced to sleep so we would have energy in the morning.

At 7:30, 9 of us left for our adventure, other cyclists from our group were starting there ride at this time as well, we made it to the top of the first climb that everyone had to do in less then 2 hours and then went crazy fast down the other side. I used alex and johns draft to hit 86.7km/hr my new top speed. Just around the 60km mark of the ride we turned off the planed sea to sea route and started our climb. We climbed from 7,500ft up to 10,000ft and then we all met up with Reubens parents and got refueled with food and water and started the next climb. To fully understand the next climb you need some facts.

MOUNT EVANS

- 14,270ft

- Highest paved road in the world

- Highest road in North America

- At 14,000ft there is 1/2 the amount of oxygen as there is at sea level

At around 3:00 we all summited the mountain! At the top it was beautiful but it was also sooooooo cold. It was 5 degrees celcious at the top of the mountain. We quickly took some summit pictures, refueled again and then put on as much clothes as we had and began the descent. It was crazy because as soon as we got back into the tree line we could start feeling our fingers again. What took us 2 hours to climb took us 20 minutes to descend. At this point we were only at 140km day this meant we had another 80km to go. Lucky for us most of it was downhill. The rest of the ride was fairly univentful other then the fact that we ended up catching up to the sweep team 30km from camp. What amazed me was how I could still walk by the end of the ride. The human body is crazy, keep feeding it and it keeps on going. To give you an idea of how much food it takes to be able to ride this much I wrote down most of what I ate.

Breakfast

-2pancakes (dinner plate sized with syrop)

-3 peices of bacon

-1 toasted bagel with cream cheese

Lunch

-1 bagel with cream cheese

-1 pb @ j sandwich

-1 turkey and cheese sandwhich

-1 honey and pb sandwhich

Snacks

-3 sweet and salty peanut butter granola bars

-4 nature valley trail mix granola bars

-2 nutter butter cookies

-6 mini chocolate bars

-3 clementines

-3 cheese strings

-1, 180gram package of real fruit, compliments of carepackage from the parents.

-2 bowls of icecream

Dinner

-1/2pound hamburger with a side of fries.

We made it into camp by around 8:00 and we totaled around 8 hours on the bike. With a total of over 10,000ft of climbing.

= awesome day.

the end,

The altitude does funny things to you. lol. This picture is to remind me not to do it again.

This picture is to counteract the picture above, to convince me to do stuff like this again.This is Eritia Smit she is crazy. She was the only girl to do the climb. She's hardcore.I made it!We all made it!
We really were on that road all the way down there? (notice that we are way above the tree line.)