A COMPLETELY CRAZY PLAN TO BIKE ACROSS COLORADO (500 miles)

I mean, this is genuinely something that I'm not sure that I can physically do. Are you feeling confident? I feel like I gotta go to the bathroom.

We're Karen Nate, and we've spent the last four years traveling to 100 countries. But 2020 brought us back to the US where we bought a converted sprinter van to explore our own backyard. Last week, we drove our van to the highest city in the United States.

Hence the name Leadville, where our friends.

Gave us a free place to park and a room in their historic bed and breakfast that was built in the 1800s.

What if I told you there was a trap door in this room?

And this is where things started to get interesting.

So I've been trying to, like, trace back in my head how I got to this point.

And this is what I think happened. So since we arrived in Leadville, Rick had been talking about this idea of going to ride the Colorado Trail in a few weeks. And if you're like I was a few weeks ago and you don't know what the Colorado Trail is, it's a 500 mile trail that stretches from Denver to Durango. Some people hike it and other people do it on bikes. And then last week he took me on a mountain bike ride and he just, he casually mentioned that it. It might be nice to have some company on the ride and if I wanted to, I could come along. At first I dismissed it as this completely crazy idea because it was considering the fact that I can count the number of times that I've been on a mountain bike on one hand.

But at that point, I. I didn't realize it then, but a seed was planted. And that night I found myself on my phone before I was going to sleep, secretly researching the Colorado Trail.

It quickly became apparent that this would be an epic adventure through some of the most beautiful parts of Colorado. But it was also very apparent that I was totally unprepared. In order to finish the Colorado Trail, it would require two weeks on a mountain bike for eight hours a day. And most of the trail lies above 10,000ft where the air is thin, which would make it even harder to breathe. And to top it all off, the elevation change on the trail is equivalent went to climbing Everest three times on a bike. When I was a kid, I used to push my bike up the hill because it was harder to ride than it was to walk the bike. Hadn't really thought about that until just now.

Even though I knew that there was a good chance this would be the most miserable two weeks of my entire life. I started to entertain the idea.

So, like, segment 11, that's just like from the Mount Albert north trailhead west towards Buena Vista.

Yeah.

And we'd have friends that would tag.

In here and there. There's a chance that I'm getting talked into riding across Colorado.

At this point, I was still on the fence and I needed something to sway me one way or the other. So I decided to call my bro.

Who is a mountain biker.

Hey.

Hey. Have you ever heard of the Colorado Trail?

Yes. I figured if he was crazy enough to drop what he was doing, fly out to Colorado the next week and spend two weeks doing this trail with me, that would be enough to make me commit. Yeah. So it's like 500 miles across Colorado. Did you know that you can also mountain bike it?

Really?

Yeah. So really the question is, what are you doing next week?

Yeah.

Long story short, this conversation basically ended by him saying, hey, if plane tickets are reasonable, I'll fly out and let's do it. Looking good. All right, talk to you soon. All right, bye.

It's sounding like it's gonna happen.

It's gonna be so fun.

So fun.

I'll give you a massage every night. I'll cook you big, delicious dinners. Breakfast. Breakfast Tacos is negotiable.

This is crazy. And five minutes later, I got this text. And this one, and this one, and this one. To which I replied.

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Nate.

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So I heard about the Colorado Trail for the first time last week. We leave in four days, and I'm going to pick up a bike that I've never ridden before.

So it's been incredibly hard to find a bike for this trip since everybody's spending so much time outside this summer and our timeline was super short. But Brian here at Cycles of Life has been nice enough to sell me one of the bikes that they normally rent out for people who come to train for the Leadville 100 race. This is, like, way too nice for me.

Yeah.

Oh, nice bike. Thanks. That's awesome. Thank you.

I don't think you understand how much Nate doesn't know about mountain biking or just bikes in general.

I'm doing a small adjustment. So you said you're going to be doing the Colorado trailer list, right? I'm going to attempt it. You're going to do the Colorado Trail? I'm going to do the Colorado. I'm going to do it.

The fact that he committed to doing this crazy trip anyways is just one of the many reasons why I love him. Thankfully, the guys at the bike shop Leadville are proud.

Just keep the rubber sun down and.

You should be fine. It's good advice.

After buying the bike, we went to our new friend Rafa's shop in town to get some bike accessories for the trip, which turns out there are a.

Lot of Carl getting set up with packs at the highest bike shop in the U.S. also, the owner of this place has one of the coolest stories ever. He literally rode his bike from Mexico City to Colorado towing his dog. And he's like the nicest guy ever met.

There's actually, like a mini documentary about his life that we will link. It is so good. This guy is a legend.

There's a chance that I can get away with stuffing my puffy jacket, my rain jacket, and a water bladder in here, and then I don't even have to carry a backpack or a hip bag. And then main water bottle camera.

You wouldn't go wrong.

Chafing butter. Yeah. Do you use it? Yeah, yeah, if I'm on a long ride all day. When you're putting your bike shorts on in the morning. Oh, really? Just go ahead and rub it in there. Yep, yep. Don't be shy. Do you grab a couple more?

Nate decided with the little time he had left, he needed to squeeze in as much training as possible, which wasn't that much. But the morning before we were supposed to leave, we woke up to the mountains looking like this. Completely Covered in smoke.

My brother's supposed to be flying into Denver tomorrow.

It's Dusty. Thanks for calling. I'll give you a call back as soon as possible. Thanks. Bye. It's Dusty. Hey. Hey. How's it going? Pretty good. Have you seen any news about Colorado in the last few days? No, why? There are multiple wildfires, one of which being like one of the biggest in the state's history. The first few days we were here, we could, like, see just the beautiful mountain range. In the last two days, like, we can't even see the mountains from where we are now. And I woke up this morning and I just, like, can't even breathe out of my nose.

Well, man, look, I really appreciate you calling me, especially given everything that's going on right now.

Rick's on the phone with one of his friends who's a firefighter.

The whole state seems like it's covered in smoke by 2:00pm I mean, would you consider it like a health risk to do something like this right now? Would it be not smart to ride 10 or 12 hours a day with this kind of smoke in the air?

If it doesn't bother you, I think there's places on the CT that you'll be able to dodge it.

Okay.

After a few hours of research, we decided to look at other options.

Do you have any concerns at this point?

But with everyone's schedule postponing, the trip wasn't going to happen.

How do you feel about biking across Oregon? Oregon? Yeah.

I mean, in some ways, I'm almost more excited about this than the CT in a lot of ways.

20 20.

Today has been such a weird day. One minute we've been riding the Colorado trail, the next minute we've been driving 16 hours to Oregon to start a 600 mile trail there. And we've literally gone back and forth on this like 10 times. But the mountains are in view. Again, we've been calling Rick's friends who live all around Colorado, so we're feeling pretty good about sticking with the original plan.

This is so crazy.

Oh, shoot. Hello.

Today is the day he is actually doing this.

See you in Denver. All right, see you there.

If there was any chance of Nate backing out of this, it's too late now because his younger brother is on an airplane en route to Denver and we're on our way to pick him up.

I guess it's a Bronco, like the Denver Broncos.

This is the closest we've been to an airport since April.

I miss it.

Are you sure?

Yeah, I'm 10ft, put on your flashers. We do?

Yeah, I think you might.

No, no, no, no, no. Like, I think you might hit it. I don't think you can fit. There's a car behind you.

Hey, move these cones. Let's pull over.

What do we do?

Okay. I just talked to a couple people who acted like they knew what they were talking about, and they said if you go all the way over to the left lane, you should be able to fit, and we'll come get in and then we can exit. Oh, yeah, I think you look okay.

You did it.

Is this gonna fit? I don't know. This is the messiest airport pickup I've ever had.

Put it in through the truck.

I think if I go up, put it in. I don't know. Oh, don't break that knob off.

Like a glove.

Oh, man. What a start to the trip.

Welcome to car.

That was.

So stressful.

If this is any indication of how this trip is gonna go, we're in trouble.

Not sure which one of us is more crazy for doing this. Me for having so little mountain biking experience or Dusty from flying from sea level to go bike at over 10,000ft for two weeks.

I would say you.

What's up, man?

Nice to meet you, Dusty.

I'm Ricky.

We're at spending the night at a campground about 30 minutes away from where the trail starts. And in the morning, we see what we're made of.

This is our first time attempting to sleep three people in a van. This is the best solution we've come up with so far, at least. It's like a brand new pair of chocolate. Right on.

I told him he should sleep in the coffin. I'll turn the light out after you get in. I just want to see how this goes. Get in.

Are you comfortable?

Yeah.

It's not. All right. Good night, Dusty.

Good night.

Good night, Kara.

Good night.

This morning we're trying to figure out how to put Dusty his bike back together.

By we, I mean.

Hello.

Bag. Sorry.

That's the start there.

So you guys will go down here. We'll meet you here.

Is that where the sandwiches will be?

Yeah. And then we'll camp.

There's all dispersed camping BLM along this road here. The logistics coordinator.

So Beck, Rick's wife, and Cara are the support crew for the journey. Beck's doing all the planning.

Yeah.

How many segments are there total?

28.

So we're going to attempt to do the first two today. They're going to meet us at the end of one just in case. And it's 28 total. Miles with over 5,000ft of harder elevation.

It'll be fun.

It's going to be great.

We'll meet you halfway with cheeseburgers.

You really just to want disappointed laugh. It's a ham sandwich. I'm just glad you're the one like leading the van driving. I'm not sure Cara would ever find us.

She's got find my husband.

I'm not.

Here we go.

Mine is saying head west. Yes. Okay, we'll follow you. We know exactly what we're doing.

Oh, look how cool your bikes look.

That's an easy 20 miles.

Yeehaw. I have like serious butterflies right now. I'm just. It's just like nervous excitement. I think there's. There's few things that I've started in life that have such a high chance of failure. I mean, this is genuinely something that I'm not sure that I can physically do. Are you feeling confident? I feel like I gotta go to the bathroom.

Got it. Right.

So you think you just like apply it directly? Like direct? I would say. Yeah. I don't know. I'm not gonna use it right now. Well, I already squirted on my hand, so I guess I'm gonna. That's so much. He might want to turn away for this.

Gotta go in my. Oh, I don't know how I feel about this.

I feel like this is inappropriate.

That feels gross down in there now.

Have fun doing a bike ride.

Thank you.

That was super sweet, Frankie. She's the cutest thing ever. How you feel?

Violate it.

All right.

This is it, huh? See you, bud.

Love you.

I'm scared.

We're only going 17 miles right now. We're acting like we're never going to see civilization again.

I'll never forget. You will.

See you in three hours. Journey of 500 miles starts with a single pedal. Here we go.

San Diego. I love you.

Wow.

I cannot believe it's actually happening. It's just been this crazy idea for the last week. Really isn't that long.

No way. We are literally two miles into the trail, and we just came up on a herd of bighorn sheep. Oh, there goes the babies. They're so fast. They in the rang up. That was pretty good. That was awesome.

Man, what a start. That's the kind of stuff I was hoping for on the trail. I mean, this is like kind of a bike trip, but it's also about just seeing the most beautiful parts of Colorado. Also a major test of endurance and mental toughness.

I think he'll knock you off your bike in A second if he wants to.

Why are you coming towards me?

Swim from a road to a skinny hiking trail really quickly.

All right.

Driving about an hour to the trailhead, I think is what it's called. Turnbrake. That wasn't good. In charge of the camera for two seconds and I almost break the thing. Woo.

The fun part.

Man, this is gonna be a fun two weeks.

That was exciting.

Well, just had my first wreck. Thankfully, I caught myself on my feet by my bike.

Everything.

Seems good. Try not to do that again.

Just trying to keep up with two people who are way better than me on a mountain bike. Hey, good work. First thousand feet? Heck, yeah.

75,000 more to go.

All right. 1% there. I'm the only one that's wrecked so far.

All right. We just had a gorgeous drive to the end of the trail where if all goes as planned, the boys should meet us here. It should take them about three and a half hours from the time they left until they get here. So now we just wait.

They don't call it hike a bike for no reason. We're about 10 miles into the trail. We were told that anywhere from 10 to 60% of the Colorado trail could be pushing our bikes. And this is hard to do this one hand. The first long pushing section was about now that I realized that this is going to be a lot less about riding a bike 500 miles and a lot more about getting myself and the bike to the end of the trail together one way or the other.

Looks a lot better mountain biker than me, which means that I get to do a lot more pushing.

So I'm taking my job as support van very seriously, which is why there is food overflowing from this cabinet. This cabinet.

Nate's closet, and also the bathroom. We're definitely not going to go hungry on this trip. Also, I.

Bought this shirt just because it has a bicycle on it.

You can barely make out the white vans right. Right there in the valley.

Looks like we've knocked out the first big climb.

The guys should be coming down this trail right here. And while we wait, we're going to set up lunch.

Yeah.

PB and j for the little girls.

And bagel blts for the big girls.

Woo.

Nicely done.

Welcome back.

I literally went over my handlebars, like, two seconds ago.

I knew I should have put my gloves on. You all right? I'm good.

Hope not. Blood grosses me out. This can make it a little more challenging.

Yeah.

Yeah. What was that?

We did 16.44 miles.

Feels pretty good.

Okay, this is 16.8.

16 miles in, and the Colorado trail is already putting us to the test. It's drawn blood. Dusty's tire's already flat. I mean, it's completely flat.

Oh, it's so cold and beautiful.

Oh, that was the best decision I made all day.

I can do that. Bring it on.

Love you.

Love you.

My name is Frankie. My name is Evie. Frankie, be Elsa. Frankie and Evie are also part of the support team. And they're also two of my new best friends.

That first segment was the most climbing that I've ever done on a mountain bike in a single day. Now we're starting segment two and we're doing it all over again. 2,000 something feet, here we come.

All right, we've parked the vans on some BLM land and this is home for the night.

And there's a bat around and it's chasing us.

It's true. He almost flew in the van, didn't he? Yeah. You wanna get started on dinner? Yeah.

Segment two of the trail started out.

With.

Super loose rocks and really tight switchbacks, meaning that had to get off our bike about every hundred yards just to make it around the corners. Go back.

We're setting up camping and the dads are gonna come back from our bike. Hi.

Man. I've turned a massive corner. I hit a real low point around lunch after the crash and I don't know. Trail's beautiful. We haven't had to walk the bike.

Feeling so much better. Oh, big one. I'm feeling just happy to be out here at this point.

That was fun.

Don't worry. Totally under control. I got a bug in my eye and I was like.

Okay.

They'Re almost back. Day one is almost complete. I hope it goes smoother than last time. They came back.

Hey, Francis, thanks for coming to get us.

Congratulations.

Day one is complete.

That segments.

Was so much fun. So much better than the first one.

Cheers, team. Cheers.

That was great. Cheers.

Good work.

Here. Look at my shirt. This is a plain black shirt. But look, it gets even better on the back.

Oh. Oh, my gosh. It's like it's going. My gosh. It's hard.

It's just salt from all my sweat. Look, it's even on my sleeves.

It's kind of cool.

I guess that might be the most I've ever sweat it in a day.

I'm so impressed. Oh, so proud of you.

I'm glad you got back safe.

All right. We're going to try something a little different on this trip. I. I don't know what we're going to call it. But like, you know how in like Survivor they have that, that camera that everybody talks to individually, kind of like the confessional camera or something like that, just to kind of like get everybody's perspective for the day. So day one, I had no clue what to expect going into today, but the first segment was definitely rougher than I thought it was going to be. My first little wreck where I laid the bike down. You know when you step off something and it's just a little bit further and you have your leg locked out? That's. That's essentially how I caught myself with my leg completely locked and it just jammed my lower back. And that was hurting so bad. But I was just trying to keep it to myself. I didn't want to like tell anybody and bring the group down, but coming down those switchbacks and then like coming off my bike and having to catch myself with my foot like every 30 seconds just added to the pain. So I was already like in way more pain than I expected to be in the first day. And then literally a hundred yards from the van, I took my crash. And so lunch, like that was, that was just a low moment for me. I don't know if I was doubting finishing, but I was just, I was just down.

But this afternoon was, was so great. There was very little hike. A bike you could almost ride the entire thing. The. The trail was nice and flowy.

And I feel strong. Like endurance wise. I feel way better than I expected to. This was by far the longest bike ride I've ever done and I feel like I can get up and do it again tomorrow. It's just whether or not I can keep my wheels on the ground and not up in the air. I'm also really not looking forward to digging this piece of gravel out of my hand.

Well, I'm definitely more tired than anybody else after day one. Rick is by far the best rider technically and physically. Me and Nate are probably pretty even physically going into this, except for the fact that he's been living at elevation for a month or two now and I just got here last night. Technically I'm probably a little bit better rider than him though, so hopefully on the long haul that'll pay off.

Day one was super fun. I didn't expect us to actually get as far as we did. It still is amazing to think that Nate's only been riding a bike for like a like eight times in his life. A mountain bike, and that's a hard section of trail. I think Nate probably doubled the most elevation gain that he's ever done in his life in a day. Dusty. I mean, I'm just learning. I'm just getting to know Dusty. He flew in late last night, put his bike together this morning. So it's been like a brutal start for him. I was surprised how good I felt today. I feel just super lucky to have a. A family that wants to follow me around for two weeks while I ride my bike in the mountains. And it's been a good first day. Be interesting to see how we feel tomorrow. Hopefully a couple beers and a nice meal will refresh us and make us feel good for tomorrow.

I'm. I'm going to die. This is a good reminder right here.

Just see it the whole time.

Nate's brother is on an airport. On an airport.

Love this airport.

See that? The bike got inspected.

No.

Probably because you stuff so much in there.

This is the heaviest bike in the world, I think.

Is he the one that does, you.

Know, the technology and I. I'm like, how do I share it?

It'll make for some good footage.

I know. I hope you were recording when you.

Pretty sure I was. He's already recorded two falls.

You had another one?

Yeah, that one I did.

Why aren't you wearing your gloves?

Thought they were hot.

Almost took my head off.