July 11th: Georgetown – Granby 81km, 1031m climbed

Autor: Tim Goodall

We were all up around 7am and went over to the breakfast room. Covid caused motels to do away with breakfast to avoid people getting too close so there is only tea, coffee and pastries for people to take to their room. It was not a good start to the day but we didn’t want to take the time to look for a diner so we concentrated on getting the bags packed and the bikes loaded. We were on the road just after 9 and heading east downhill to the junction for the US40 where we turned to head west up the mountain. We had a 27km climb to get us up 900m to Berthoud  pass. Progress was a bit slower than yesterday because we were carrying all our baggage this time but we made it to the top by 1pm. That was made up of 3 hours cycling time plus an hour for all the breaks and we had used up all our water to do it. Fortunately, it was downhill all the way to the Winter Park resort where we could get refills. It did not take long to drop the 500m to the junction for the WP resort. I waited a minute for Mark then John to arrive and that was when Mark announced that he had left his Camelbak rucksack at the top of the pass!!!!

I don’t think for a second that we thought we had time for him to cycle back to fetch it so John and I convinced him to hide his bike behind a wall, lock it up and hitch a ride to the top. We got Mark nicely positioned on the side of the road with his thumb out and within a minute he had a ride so John and I hopped on our bikes and carried on to the resort centre and settled down at the bar in Doc’s Roadhouse for lunch and a copious supply of cold drinks. John texted Mark details of where we were and carried on sharing our starter of chicken nuggets and celery sticks. How anybody is supposed to eat a starter that size on their own I have no idea.  Much to our surprise, before we had finished, Mark suddenly appeared at the bar having found his rucksack and the driver that took him up had brought him back down!!! That his a fine example of how people help each other out in the west.

Once we were all rehydrated we got back on the road for the final 30km to our condo at Silvercreek where we checked in for 3 nights. The next two days are for out and back day trips.

We rounded off the evening with a walk over to MacD for supper and then went shopping at the nearby supermarket for breakfast items and the inevitable six-pack of beers and crisps. All done.

The long road shead

 

Higher

 

And higher

 

Almost there

 

There we are folks

 

Winter Park resort centre

 

The famous Moffat tunnel west portal

 

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