We woke up a bit later than we wanted. We made breakfast and got out of the campground without being asked about fees. Packing up took much longer than I expected. It was cold and I was very glad I brought the cold weather gear I did. We rode along along 285 with barely any bike/breakdown lane to the top of Kenosha Pass.
We stopped at the trail head at the top of the pass and ran in to a fellow ITT rider named Jim. He went to the campground there to get water and we decided we should wait and fill up after a few more miles of riding as we had just filled up at the campground and figured Jim would catch back up to us then. We rode the down from the top of the pass which was a blast, a lot of people told me this was the best descent they had ridden on the trail and it was definitely a good one. At the bottom of the hill there was some meadows with a ridiculous amount of campers, there was so much Bronco's gear out it seemed like they were tail gating.
We filled up on water and Jim caught up with us and we rode the next section together. Kyle and Jim had heard that the climb up Georgia pass was rough. We started up it and I was surprised that I was able to ride up most of it, in fact it was the first (and only) time I was in front of Kyle. The top of the pass was hot and I ended up pushing the last mile or so. Kyle and I threw on our rain jackets as it was windy and chilly at the top and we saw some rain clouds coming together. It started to drizzle and we saw Jim was still a few minutes from the top so we decided to get down into the trees for cover and wait for Jim further down the trail, exactly at this moment it started to hail. We rode down half way and waited for the hail to slow down under the trees then kept going to the bottom. This descent was rad, the top was fast and flowy and the bottom was rocky and rowdy, especially with all the rain. We lost the trail for a minute and then found where it crossed the road. We kept going for a bit and stopped to fill up again.
Jim caught us and we started riding again knowing we had another big hill to climb. I didn't realize it until we started going up but I was very hungry so me and Jim stopped to eat while Kyle started up the climb. While we were eating we started talking to some day hikers who told us they were looking for the trail towards the back of Keystone where their friend lost his life this past Winter in an avalanche. After another brutal climb we were at the top.
We started down the hill, another biblicaly fun descent. Kyle and I caught and passed a lady who was on a race build Cannondale. While waiting for Jim at the next fork she stopped to ask us what was with all the luggage on our bikes and asked how much they weighed with the suggestion their around 30 lbs, which Kyle and I laughed at as our bikes are probably just about that with no luggage. She tried to pick up Kyle's bike and we laughed to ourselves a bit when she couldn't get the front wheel off the ground. We hiked over the final hill and made our way down towards civilization. We discussed if we should stay in town, keep going, or just stop real quick to resupply at the closest store.
We decided to ride towards Frisco towards this gas station and Jim decided to head that way to get a hotel. We spent some time at the gas station and filled up and filled up our bags. I spent $40 on food here, which is the most I've ever spent on gas station food. Kyle and I found on the map where we wanted to camp and parted ways with Jim hoping to meet up with him the next day. We eventually got to a good spot to camp near a creek and tried to make a fire but it had just rained so everything was soaked.
Mileage: 47.3 mi
Climbing:7,618 ft
Moving Time: 7:41
Camping Elevation: 10,555 ft
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