With our plans in place to ride the USA Pro Cycling Challenge, Mike Prendergast and I left our homes on the Colorado Front Range and began our journey with a four hour drive to Gunnison. We chose to make the trip late on a Wednesday, meet the representatives from Gunnison and roll out early Thursday morning for the ride. We arrived in Gunnison with enough time to check in to our hotel, drop our bags, shoot some video of the city and make it to Garlic Mikes for dinner.
We met with four representatives on the Gunnison side of Stage 2, Joellen Fonken, Petra St. George, John Messner and Jon Brown, all who had various roles in bringing the stage to Gunnison. John Messner, the Facility and Events Manager for the City of Gunnison, was a major driving force behind the task of securing a stage and explained to us that it was not the race organizers who proposed the stages, but each town and city in Colorado had the opportunity to submit a bid outlining four to five different stage routes through their community. Gunnison submitted a number of options including one through Black Canyon. Though the race organizers were reluctant at first to go with the stage over Cottonwood Pass due to the dirt road, that was the option that was finally selected.
After Gunnison was selected, the excitement in the community started to gain momentum. “The entire community of Gunnison has embraced the excitement and opportunity of hosting a stage of the inaugural USA Pro Cycling Challenge,” said John Messner. “We hope to share with the spectators and competitors the character and characters of a “real” Colorado town. Even more exciting is being part of the “Queen Stage” of the race which will place the rugged and beautiful environment of the valley we call home on the world stage. We invite the world to come on over to Gunnison, a place we feel to be the quintessential Colorado town, to share in this exciting time!”
This enthusiasm and spirit for this world class event is obvious through the actions of its own citizens and employees. In passing, Messner mentioned that ever single city employee will be out on race day volunteering their own time to see that this event is a success.
In Colorado the weather can predictably unpredictable. Morning sunshine can be followed by afternoon sun, showers, wind, lightening, hail or any combination which can occasionally lead to rock slides or flash flooding if conditions are right. Going into this ride and wanting to shoot video, we chose to leave Gunnison around 6am about three hours early than the start of the actual race on August 24th. For the portion of the ride up to the summit of Cottonwood Pass we were going to be joined by another rider, Jon Brown, one of the owners of Go To Guide. Jon is a former professional cyclist and his company title sponsor for the Gunnison side of Stage 2 so he was going to be able to point out some highlights along the way.
The three of us met at the local coffee shop near the start of Stage 2 and after fueling up, rolled out at 6:30am. Mike and I had planned on riding this stage with what we could carry and buy along the way – no support vehicle and no SAG wagon. We did find out the night before that John Messner was going to be driving up Cottonwood Pass to shoot some photos and he offered to take some water and food to the top of that pass for us. We decided to take him up on the offer.
At 6:30am, the air was cool, and though it tried to make an appearance, the sun rising over the mountains was obscured by the cloud cover. From Gunnison at 7,703 feet to the top of Cottonwood Pass at 12,126 feet laid 33.5 miles of pavement and 14 miles of dirt road. The road is a gentle climb out of Gunnison for approximately 10 miles until the stage reaches CO-742 at Almont. The right turn at Almont takes the riders up one of the most beautiful sections of the stage along the Taylor River until it reaches Taylor Park Reservoir. Through this canyon, the road has small sections with slight up ticks in grade that are not sustained. The steepest sections occur when the racers approach and then pass the dam at the Taylor Park Reservoir. The route then travels around the reservoir until it turns onto Colorado 209/Cottonwood Pass Road which is where the fun will begin for the racers.
The grade on Cottonwood Pass Road is not any more difficult than the asphalt section leading up to this 14 miles of dirt. On our day up this pass, the road had sections of wash boards, potholes, loose shoulders that 700×23 tires sink right into, tacky sections from the heavy rain that fell the night before, and a few cows that were hanging out in the middle of the road. John Messner informed us that the road would be closed at 3pm on August 23rd so that the road could be grated in the rough sections and moistened to reduce dust as Magnesium-Chloride has not been applied to that road surface since July 4th. As we ascended the pass and the view opened up due to the approaching tree line, there were more potholes and washboards that appeared. It was actually rough enough to cause a child’s mountain bike to be ejected from a passing vehicle and come to rest in the middle of the road; or we assumed that since we did not see Team Saxo-Bank ride by which meant that it could not be Contador’s bike dropped to the ground in disgust. With the thinning sections of trees, the top of the pass started to appear. It wound up through a number of switchbacks until the road turned back to very smooth pavement across the Continental Divide.
With the thinning trees and tinning air close to the top of Cottonwood Pass, the clouds also started to disappear. Even though there was a noticeable temperature drop, the sun felt good. Another pleasant surprise for the first section of our ride is that we were joined by John Messner who we chatted with at the summit of Cottonwood Pass about vantage points of watching this stage from the top of the pass. He transported our water and food to the top for us so we refueled; said goodbye to Jon Brown; thanked John Messner and Brian Swanson , who accompanied John; and left our only support vehicle behind to proceed down the pass. The other side of Cottonwood Pass has a steeper grade. We easily hit speeds close to 50 mph with little effort at the top, but once we hit the lower section with a 10 percent grade our speed increased to over 55 mph. Mike and I were not even in an aerodynamic position so we both will not be surprised if the racers hit speeds in excess of 70 mph – a blur if you are watching the race there.
After the 10 percent grade, the grade reduces along with the speed until the stage rolls into Buena Vista and turns left onto US-24, almost 20 miles from the top of Cottonwood Pass. The racers are only going to be in Buena Vista for minutes even though we were there a little longer. Apparently while stopping to take photographs on Cottonwood Pass, dirt and gravel contaminated my left pedal so much that a tremendous amount of force was required to twist my cleat out of the pedal. That in turn caused the cleat to move on the bottom of my shoe and the cleat would not engage into the pedal. We stopped at a gas station and the cleat was repositioned, but it required some sort of lubrication so that it would engage into the pedal. The gas station did not have any WD-40 or oil behind the counter and the motor oil was sold in quarts – too big to carry if I needed it down the road. The solution was the lip balm/gel… it worked perfectly for my cleats and kept my lips from cracking.
Complete KineticShift Stage 2 Coverage of the USA Pro Cycling Challenge