38 Miles and approximately 2500 feet of Climbing. I really like this as a first day ride. It’s just shy of 40 miles and gives you a good amount of climbing and ALL day to enjoy the monument. No need to get up at sunrise. You don’t need to take down your tent and set it up someplace else (unless you neighbor snores too loudly). Even by sleeping in, you can start and end the ride before the heat of the day. Neat concept and a great way to start a tour. The Monument is a beautiful ride with stunning vistas, switchbacks, tunnels, and scenery. The climbing can get steep in a few areas, approaching 9% on the southern end, but the extreme grades are fairly short. There are plenty of places to pull over, take a breather, and enjoy the views. Please note, there are very significant drop-offs here, so if you don’t like heights, the roads may cause your heart to flutter a bit.
The day started out very nice. The road was flat for a bit, and then we begin to climb into the monument.
We look pretty good at this point. You can see that it was beginning to cloud up and threatening to storm. We didn't stop for very long and headed out of the monument on the long, fast downhill. As we got to flat road back into GJ, we heard some thunder and it sprinkled on us a bit. We didn't think too much about it. We finished and put our bikes away and headed for some liquid and food. When we came back, we noticed lines of people washing their bikes. We couldn't figure out what they were doing and thought they were just some kind of neat freaks. Then we begin to look carefully and they and their bikes were filthy. They had gotten caught in the rain and the hail in the Monument. I'm so glad we didn't dally on top or we would have gotten it as well.
Day one ended with food, and chilling in the tent.
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