The breakfast in the hotel was amazing! An array of pastries fresh from the bakery ditto on the bagels. Fresh fruit lots of watermelon good coffee with real milk. Peanut butter hard boiled eggs and more.

I ate some with plenty of salt and stocked up for the ride. 52 miles up and over the continental divide with not so much as a gas station in between so I was carrying a lot of weight with all my food and water in addition to everything else.

The climb starts right out of steamboat.

  

I started out at eight when the health food store opened and bought another tube of Arnica

Quickly it turns into a pretty tough grade of about 7% and it goes on for 8 miles. With my steel bike and all the gear it was relentless.

    

I stopped a lot to eat and take photographs and stretch.

There are many turnouts for exhausted vehicles and for people to look at the views or take photographs. At one of them I met a couple and they took a photo of me.

So  here is me looking like a complete bike nerd covered in my white zinc  sunscreen.

7% isn’t bad when I’m at home doing  the Tunnel Road climb in Oakland hills on my aluminum bike with nothing on it but this is a different story.

I started to wonder if I would make it. I told myself that the mountain would still be there and I could camp on the way up if I wanted to.

Behind me 
Before me

The views are amazing. Despite the advertisements for the iPhone 6 not even that will do these views justice. One just can’t really get it on the camera but I try.

I get texts from people on my way up and read them at my breaks and that’s encouraging.

By 11 o’clock the wind is in my face and there’s a thunderstorm to the North. The sky is getting darker and my legs are very tired.

On my way up two bikers pass me. They’re like the bikers who pass me on Tunnel; the skinny guys in fancy tight colorful outfits on $10,000 bikes. These guys  just whizz pass me.

After a little while they come down the other way. I am amazed. This is like their daily ride. Utah and Colorado are full of mega athletes. People move here for the sports.

Near the top I am starting to wonder whether or not I will survive. I laid my bike down on the road and I put my legs on top of the panniers to get them elevated and I take a 10 minute break just lying there.

Lo and behold I’m almost at the top. I thought the top was supposed to be 11,000 feet so when I was at 9000 feet and saw this sign I was completely bummed.

Why I was bummed was because I thought I’d have to climb up again and My spirits revived when I saw the next sign!

WoooHooooo! I was at the top. I did it! I could hardly believe it. There’s no way I can explain how I felt. It’s like doing something you thought you’d never be able to do.

I reach the top at noon. The sky was so dark that the cars had their lights on and so did I. At the top it started to rain and it rained all the rest of the day. I had my rain suit on so it wasn’t so bad. In a way it was soothing.

You’d think after a climb like that which in total was 20 miles that the next 32 miles would be downhill but not so.

        

The hills weren’t terribly big but there were hills all the way into Kremmling. I got there around four to find that it was a nice little very little town.