Climb Every Mountain

So I know the last time I wrote I complained about the wind. And this time I might be complaining about the hills, even though they are better than wind. Actually it's not so much that I'm complaining about the hills, it's more that it does feel like we climb every mountain.

In between my last post and this post we had one of our most serious climbs of the trip. It was as we were leaving Cedar City, we climbed to an elevation of 10,000+ feet from about 5,000 feet. The route we took had an incline in the double digits for over five miles. Even our fastest and most in-shape bikers were taking breaks every 100 feet or so. There was one point in particular where there were some very short switchbacks where we could finally see the grade we were climbing from the side instead of just seeing it straight on. I know my group stopped at the bottom of it and thought for sure there was no way we were going to make it up that. But finally I said "I'm going for it, either I'm going to make it or roll backward trying!". I started up, went around the curve, and realized that this was no different than anything else; which was both comforting and disturbing at the same time because it really seemed like no-one could bike up something that steep. But we could and we finally made it. I'm pretty I myself was moving at about four miles per hour. It was the longest climb of my life but it felt good to make it to the top. And the views were AMAZING.

And then there was today. The terrain itself was mostly rolling hills. We crossed the into Colorado from Utah today which I think everyone is excited for. About ten miles into Colorado, I looked up and towards the left and there were some snow-capped mountains in the background. As we kept riding they seemed to be more and more on our left hand side, but then of course we eventually took a left and were headed straight toward those mountains. As we rolled into Dolores, our overnight location for the night, I noticed that the only way out of this city was up a mountain! So it really does seem that we are climbing every mountain even though there MUST be other ways across this country! Now that we're in Colorado I'm pretty sure there will be a lot more mountains than the one we're climbing tomorrow to get out of Dolores. And my thighs are totally looking forward to it!!!