Climbing

So many options for today. Do I blip Tejay with a grimace of pain and an American flag behind him as he surges to the victory on Mt. Crested Butte? What about Christian VDV as he gets up to try to chase him down? Maybe the shot of Tommy D sporting the polka dots he earned yesterday? 2011 Tour de France winner Cadel looking like he would rather cry than finish the climb? Sprinter Tyler conceding the leader's jersey with as much dignity as he can pull from his non-climber's legs? The grupetto leisurely riding up the final climb (at a much faster pace than I could muster)?

As you can see, it was an excellent time watching the finishing climb of today's stage, but none of those things made today's blip. This photo wins for two reasons. The first is that I have tried over and over to take a halfway decent photos of the way mountains fade to lighter blue in the distance and finally got close. The second is the 'adventure' that resulted in the shot. Driving home from Crested Butte should have been about 230 miles and a bit shy of 5 hours. Instead it was somewhere in the neighborhood of 350 miles and 9.5 hours.

We started our trek home by deciding to go over Cottonwood Pass rather than Monarch Pass to see where the race would go the next day, and where we would be road biking in about a month for a wedding at the top of the pass. It is about the same distance, so why not? Well, as it turns out, they decided to close the pass at 2pm today so we arrived at the bottom an hour and a half into the drive to find a barricade. 'Going around' doesn't work very well when traveling in the mountains. Our choices we to basically go all the way back to the start (through road construction!) or go over Cumberland Pass which the map told us to 'inquire locally' about road conditions.

Hmmm, road construction or an unknown road of unknown condition. We decided to go for the adventure. The road turned out to be a narrow, acceptably maintained, steep dirt road climbing to 12,200 feet. The drive wasn't the greatest, but the views and sites were amazing. If I'm not mistaken, the line of mountains on the right is the continental divide. Abandoned mine workings dotted the mountainside. It was a much more enjoyable outcome than we expected when we were staring dumbfoundedly at the barricade on Cottonwood Pass.

Since I worked so hard for the shot from the top of the pass, I might as well use it!