As much as I favor mountain biking over road biking, when there’s hills to be climbed and mountains to cruise you can count me in. Once again I set my sights on the Blue River Century a 109-mile ride that goes over 3 (and a half) mountain passes and climbs close to 9,000 vertical feet over the course of the day. It’s also a cancer research fundraiser and happens to be my favorite road event in Colorado.

This year I was able to sucker convince my buddy Kyle to join in the ride, which stood to be his first century ever (talk about getting thrown into the fire!) But he’s a runner, I’m a mountain biker so logically we should be just fine on the roadies, right?

As luck would have it, we had just about the perfect day for the ride — cool in the morning, sunny in the mid-day, overcast in the early afternoon but no storms or rain. After a 4 AM wake up call in Boulder it was off to Keystone to line up and get ready to ride.

Riders getting ready to head out of Keystone for the 3rd Annual Blue River Century

As the sun began to illuminate the Gore and Tenmile Range Peaks, the packs of riders began to space out. The initial climb up Ute pass was gorgeous and culminated with the fine breakfast feast awaiting at aid station 1.

Beautiful views and a single cottonball cloud in the sky over the Gore Range at aid station 1 on Ute Pass.

Rolling along, I realized that I may like road biking more than I admit — I found myself wishing I could upgrade my wheelset and pedals, a sure sign of abandoning my anti-roadie ways. I just wanted to go faster and lighter. Uh oh, I don’t need another expensive outdoors hobby!!

The third aid station up Fremont Pass at Clinton Reservoir.

Kyle and I were both setting a strong but not over assertive pace, and the miles went by one by one. As opposed to last year’s ride where I was mostly solo, having a pal to chat with really made the day go by faster. After 92 miles and about 7 hours of riding, we were back at Keystone ready for the 8 mile mega-grind to the top of Loveland Pass.

Aid station 4 back at Keystone! Only 2,000 vertical feet and 16 miles left!

Oddly the hardest push was the 6 miles from Keystone to Arapahoe Basin, which left a little over 2 miles to the summit of 11,990 ft. Loveland Pass.  And no storms or snow this year, yay! The last two miles are steep and switchbacked but seemed to cruise a bit faster. With a final push, we were at mile 101 at the summit with only a speedy descent back to Keystone ahead of us.

We've done it!! Yahoo! And this year, no snow or ice!

The victory cruise into Keystone was a blast and when the day was done, I was neither too sore nor too tired; however, the 3 hour drive to Boulder made my eyes burn with the heat of a thousand suns. I did have the advantage of a great welcoming committee in Fremont and Mystic, who I was watching for the night.

My biggest fans.

Can’t wait for next year’s ride!

Shaine, Richard and Sebastian on Monarch Crest with the 14ers Shavano and Tabeguache in the background.

Ahhh, Monarch Crest — good times! I try to hit up the ‘Crest when I can — the tough climbs, fast descents and rolling terrain are some of the finest true mountain biking anywhere (a good deal of the climbing is over 11,000 ft.) This year’s ride offered a bit of carnage with 4 flat tires between our crew plus a severed rear derailleur on the last 5 miles for me. But we patched our tires, turned my bike into a fixie and had a blast wrapping up.

It’s funny how hard we work for those moments of nirvana — good trails, good company and functioning bikes are just part of the equation. We train our bodies to push the climbs and flow the singletrack. Most of us devote great portions of our living hours to jobs that give us the paycheck that buys us freedom in small increments. We count the days and months between the next great adventure, hoping that our years are measured in summits and rides rather than coffee breaks and credit cards.

All I’m saying is it’s so very nice when the balance tips in the favor of the things that nourish the soul; a little inspiration can go a long way.

The 360 degree panorama from Mount Oklahoma (13,845 ft.) in the Sawatch Range. Click on picture for full size view!

My trip to Mount Oklahoma was originally supposed to be a full traverse of the peaks from Mount Oklahoma to Mount Champion but early storms prevented the entire ridgewalk. No worries though, Mount Oklahoma (13,845 ft. in the Sawatch Range, Colorado’s 85th highest ranked mountain) was a blast on its own. 

I would recommend camping along the access road (FS 110) rather than using my strategy of being kept up ALL NIGHT by my rambunctious puppy and staggering out the door from Boulder at 3:45 AM on about 2 hours of bad sleep. I’ll give more detailed directions and guidance in my Mount Oklahoma online guide but for those who have hiked Mount Elbert or Mount Massive, you’re literally on the right road. Follow the dirt road to the Elbert/Massive main parking areas (about 7 miles) and continue another 2.5 miles west to the North Halfmoon Trailhead. North Halfmoon is well maintained as it is a popular trailhead for hiking Mount Massive. The last 1/2 mile is mildly steep and a little rocky; 4x4s will have no problem and I saw several CRVs and Outbacks at the trailhead. It’s like 4×4 light. There’s also tons of free primitive campground sites en route to the trailhead. 

Mount Oklahoma as seen via my GPS tracks on Google Earth.

You can see the obvious alpha peak in the western Sawatch is 14,421 ft. Mount Massive to the east of Oklahoma. This is a bit of a blessing, as it diverts most people over to Massive. The upshot is you get a nice mile or so warm up on the Mount Massive trail before the real fun begins — the off trail route finding! Oklahoma is a great destination to practice going into the wild. There are no paths to the summit but the bulk of your navigation is above treeline and relatively intuitive. 

Memorial cross for those who perished in the 2009 Mount Massive Plane crash.

At the start of the trail is a newly installed memorial cross commemorating last year’s helicopter crash on Mount Massive on August 19th, 2009. A sobering start to the hike perhaps, but a nice tribute to the men who lost their lives on the mountain (Colorado’s peaks are littered with plane wreckage, including the famous Airplane Gully route on Navajo Peak). Unlike so many of Colorado’s big summits, this one starts with the perfect warm up trail — a nice low angle incline as opposed to the vertical quad-burners familiar to so many Sawatch Range peaks. The shared trail lasts for a few miles. Not far after the split for Mount Massive (you stay on the North Halfmoon Lakes trail), the burly shoulder of Oklahoma looms in the distance while stunning views of Deer Mountain (13,761 ft.) dominate to the west. From this vantage, Deer resembles Mount Hesperus or a miniature Maroon Bell. 

Don't be fooled - you know these Sawatch peaks are notorious for false summits! This is the 13,000 ft. shoulder of Oklahoma, so you still have 800 + vertical feet after topping out here.

Leaving the trail where Halfmoon Creek drops into a cascading, little waterfall the route up isn’t entirely obvious. The east ridge of the shoulder is climbable but with its loose, crumbly and wet class 3 terrain it’s not entirely fun. If you proceed west to the south side of the shoulder, you may find yourself following an impromptu hiker’s trail of cairns that lead to the dog-friendly class 2 hinder-grinder grassy south slopes. My preference was to split the difference and take a super fun class 2+/easy class 3 notch through the east shoulder to top out on the false summit. 

This is the line I took up Mount Oklahoma's southeast slopes. It avoids the crummy rock on the east ridge while avoiding the slogging grind up the south slopes.

~*~ 

This photo better shows the moderate terrain to the top of the false summit. The grassy ramp through the notch is the way to go, though it may not be obvious until you climb a little higher.

If you want to stay dog friendly and don’t mind a thigh burner, here’s a picture of the south slopes route (which I descended since the entire ridgewalk was out): 

If you want a monster vert workout, hit the south slopes of Mount Oklahoma.

The scrambling and climbing was fun to the shoulder and you’ll have great views of the entire Mount Massive series of summits. Once you get up to the saddle, it’s an 800 + ft. grind to the summit. There are no trails up, but the rock is relatively stable (reminded me of Fletcher Mountain just west of Quandary Peak). I did underestimate how long it would take and it’s going to get your heart redlining since you’re just about at 14,000 ft. 

The final, gradual and deceptively long push to the summit of Mount Oklahoma.

Topping out, I was bummed to see puffy cumulus clouds already building and it wasn’t even 9 AM yet. My legs and lungs felt strong, but my head was a bit fuzzy from the lack of sleep. I decided to nix the rest of the ridge because of the iffy weather (which turned out to be the right call). I really love ridge routefinding and the traverse that hits Deer Mountain, K49 and Mount Champion looks awesome — I’ll be back there soon! 

The 13,845 ft. summit of Mount Oklahoma is OK! Or if you prefer the MST3K version, it stinks!

The summit register showed about 8-10 visitors a month, a drastic downturn from the hundreds who climb nearby Elbert and Massive. I also kept thinking about Pod People and the emphatic IT STINKS OK gesture. Since I had a little bit of time on the summit, I decided to snoop around a bit and look at what I found: 

Ptarmagin are the Where's Waldo of the animal kingdom. Look closely and you'll find him, perfectly camouflaged!

After scoping out the traverse over to Deer Mountain and reaching a waypoint where I would reconvene the climb at a later date, I decided to track the southern slopes to see what the other way up Oklahoma was all about. While I give it kudos for being dog friendly, I was able to surf down most of the loose, grassy dirt. I would imagine it’s a cardiovascular delight ascending the south slopes. The bonus to the adventure was I found myself in fields of wildflowers, watching the weather roll in and seeing hikers work their way up Mount Massive. 

My favorite flower in the world and it's pink -- Elephant Head!

I sat for a while in the flowers, letting my mind drift with the clouds. There was wonderful, potent fragrance I had not smelled in the mountains before. The first thing that oddly came to mind was the scent of an inner-city laundromat, a kind of combination of dryer sheets and stand-up arcade games. Weird. 

Pictures don't do the wildflowers justice!

After pondering with the universe a bit, it was an easy traverse through the trees and back to the North Halfmoon trail. Even though I didn’t get the ridgewalkI wanted, I was still out for a good 5+ hours so it was a legit day in the hills. I’m eager to get back and finish the route, though I likely will pick up where I left off instead of going up Oklahoma again. Since route finding and off-trail adventures are my favorite, I left with a good impression of Mount Oklahoma though it’s not for everyone. I was tired when I got back to Boulder, but since I had my camera at the ready I had to take a photo of the welcoming committee that was waiting when I arrived home. 

My kids, Xanadu and Fremont and their n'er do well pal the googly cheeseburger.