Into the Sky

12,095 feet. 3,686 meters above sea level. The highest paved pass in the continental 48. Pikes Peak and Mt Evans may go higher, but they simply dead end. Independence Pass is one of the more famous climbs in the States. The climb itself is about 16 miles, but there are a few rolling miles from town beforehand to either sap or warm up the legs. The climb opens nastily, steadily above 5%, but again, at altitude it feels much worse. All you can do is grind away, watch the computer slowly tick off hundreths of miles, then tenths of miles, then miles and calculate in your head how much suffering you have left. The middle stretch flattens just a bit, while the upward bits are just as steep, there are some flat stretches, even a quick drop or two. The scenery is unrivaled. Peaks soar upwards from the valley which the road travels along, dense pine and birch forests populate the road up until treeline. Passing the ghost town of Independence is the first sign that respite is near. Finally the road sweeps to the left and you can see a ridge across the valley that is the serpentine road heading ever up. Problem is, you can see every one of the 800 or so feet left to climb. You can see the pitch of the road. It's a bit demoralizing, but at least you realize that you're almost at the top. After the last hard right hairpin, you realize that there is simply no air left. You breathe in, command your legs to hammer the pedals down as you rise out of the saddle and yet nothing, or very little, happens. I was plenty hydrated and yet I felt like I was constantly on the verge of cramping just from the sheer lack of oxygen at that height. The final grind is just that: a grind. You can barely rise out of the saddle, when you do, you gain maybe a mile an hour or two, only to lose it shortly when your legs give out. Finally making the last left turn, you see the finish, the famous sign, looming just above the road, and you try to attack again, try to rise out of the saddle only to be beaten back down. Practically falling off my bike, I take the requisite pictures, and gleefully take my reward: a 20 mile long, 30 mph descent with little hard braking yet sweeping turns all the way down. It's certainly worth the agony.





I did this descent (I rode up the exact same stretch of road as well, as the PRO challenge did the next day)