For those of you familiar with Colorado 14’ers, you’ll know that Mt. Elbert is the highest mountain in Colorado and the second highest in the lower 48. It’s also one of the few 14’ers that can be mountain biked legally. So when my buddy suggested that we give it a go, it was an easy yes! We’re both in reasonable shape and with solid, all-mountain trail bikes so we figured it’d be an easy outing. Not to give it all way, but it wasn’t. Here’s how it went (up and) down.
Living in the front range, and with a 3-hour drive to the trailhead, we thought it would be easier to camp out at the trailhead the night before and preserve that extra time for sleep. Even with that, we wanted to make sure we’d get down before the afternoon risk of lightning so it still required a 4 AM wake-up time. If you have a 4WD vehicle with good ground clearance, you can make it all the way to the summer trailhead. Otherwise, the winter trailhead is 2 miles and 1,000 vertical feet lower which would add an extra 4 miles round trip to an already tough day. Luckily, we had a Tacoma with good clearance and were able to make it to the summer trailhead where we camped for the night.
We started out at 5 AM with headlamps and a positive attitude. The trail starts out through a gorgeous Aspen grove, although we weren’t fully able to appreciate it until our return trip in the daylight. After the Aspens, you go through the pine forest and then above treeline. In theory, everything below treeline is rideable, but I think it’d be too steep for even the fittest riders and we ended up pushing our bikes for much of it.
Once above treeline, the trail gets steeper, and in many sections, there are rocky stairs where the bike must be carried. Not so much fun! The very top section is steep, with loose rock so it ended up being a slow slog as we pushed for the top.
After a 5 hour sufferfest, we finally topped out @ the summit. We got plenty of comments and atta-boys from other hikers. I’d say the funniest question we got was, “Did you have that bike delivered here?”. Had I known there was a delivery service, I never would have pushed/carried a 30 lb. bike all that way!
As tough as the uphill was, the downhill was dreamy. The top part with loose, steep rock was a bit sketchy but the rest of the trail was fast and flowy. For the descent, we were able to ride for 99% of the trail and only had to carry the bikes over the steep rocky stairs. The nice thing about the South Elbert trail is that it’s not as heavily trafficked as the “standard” Northeast Ridge trail so hiker disruption was minimal. As suggested above, the Aspen grove on the descent was just gorgeous and we had to stop a few times just to suck it all in.
As with all things cardio-related or altitude-related, pre-acclimatizing in an altitude tent for cardio improvement before trying something like this will make the experience all the more enjoyable and doable. Glad we biked a 14’er? Definitely. Ever again? Never.
~by Jon Jonis, CEO of Mountain Air Health, maker of automatically controlled altitude simulation systems for cardio improvement and weight loss
https://mountainaircardio.com
https://mountainairhealth.com
#altitudetent for cardio improvement or weight loss
#improvecardiowhileyousleep
#yousnoozeyoulose
#cardiotent
#silentoperation
#continuousventilation
#mountainaircardio
#mountelbert
#mtelbert
#bikeelbert
