After North Park and Middle Park comes South Park. This morning was frigid again, and nothing had dried out overnight. The first part of the ride was on dedicated bike lanes, before joining back to the highway for the climb up to Hoosier Pass, the highest pass on the route. At 11,500 feet it’s still 1,000 feet below the pass I did through Trail Ridge Road, and roughly the same elevation as Rollins Pass. The road twisted up and over, and I descended into South Park. This was my last trip over the Continental Divide.

Descending into South Park I followed another dedicated bike lane, although as I jolted over every fracture in the asphalt I looked longingly as the comparatively smooth surface of the shoulderless road. The lane took me to the mountain town of Fairplay, with the snow capped Rockies as the backdrop, and the South Fork of the Platte River winding through the wide grass plain.

I followed the Platte for about 20 miles, as the snowy mountains got more and more distant in my rearview. The trail started climbing up again, through green landscape, surrounded by low, rounded, and forested mountain tops. I passed through a relatively low pass and left South Park, beginning a long descent for the rest of the day.

The Rockies continued to make their own weather, the clouds formed, thundered, and I got sprinkled on again. As I was descending in the afternoon I looked up at one of the hillsides and thought that it looked like snow under the trees, but assumed it was an optical trick as I was lower and the temperature was warm, but as I cycled lower there were small snow patches on the road sides, I think the thunderstorms dropped snow here. The wind also picked up at this point, and started gusting 20-30 mph, I had a reasonably strong headwind the rest of the day. Not fun.

I had to do a longer day today, there’s not really anything between South Park and the Royal Gorge area where I am tonight. As I descended I rode through green valleys (not green compared to England, but not sagebrush desert that I have been riding through), the temperature rose considerably (the thunderstorms dropped the temperature a lot higher up), and the wind continued to gust in the wrong direction.

As I got nearer to Cañon City, where I am staying tonight, the valleys abruptly ended and were replaced with rock gorges and canyons. The official route follows the highway all the way into town but Komoot really wanted me to take Skyline Drive, it added an extra 160ish feet of climbing, at the end of a very long day I was skeptical, but I relented after seeing the highway stretch to 4 lanes, and I was really glad I did, the one way scenic drive follows a knife edge ridge of a rock out cropping that juts out into the wide valley that Cañon City is located in, the rock is really neat and the views were amazing.

I’m close to the end of section 6 in Pueblo now, but still around 200 miles from the Kansas state line. From here the trail stops going south and starts going eastwards to the Atlantic.