Leadville Day 5 Rain, Hail, Twin Lakes!

Ride 4 Strava Data: http://app.strava.com/activities/173640285

Up early as always, breakfast at 6am, meet in town by 9am for our group ride, today Art took us from Leadville to Twin Lakes via the Pipeline trail which is the location of the first aid station. Our meeting place is next to the Leadville Trail 100 headquarters and today we have a pretty good size group, bonus the races founder Ken Chlouber stopped by to say Hi to everyone.

Chatting it up with Ken Chlouber

We head down the valley like we always do and then take roads to the start of Pipeline, its approx 10 miles to get there, Pipline is a forest road thats very rocky and the flattest part of the trail, flat by Colorado standards that is! Before you get to Pipelines actual start your ride along a fence line, I had to pee so bad I went into hammer mode to get to where the woods started, rode much harder than I should have but man you gotta go, you gotta go! We get there I take care business and off we ride up the Pipeline, there are several climbs one straight climb and two horse shoes before you get to the famous little stinker, but more about it later riding down it isn't all that bad but the other way is hike a bike for most. Once you drop into the stinker, you have a climb up which ends with a short fairly steep section.

All of us are feeling pretty good, I'm feeling better every day but started to get lazy, after the climb up we get to the only section of single track on the whole course nothing to technical and fun to descent we stop at the bottom to regroup. This is where my laziness starts to kick in, I tell the group that I might just turn around and my friend Robert says nope your gonna keep going, turning around is not an option, ughh! We start off again and before you know it, were up and over the final hill and sitting in front of twin lakes, again I get lazy as Art rode all the way to the lakes damn and I just wanted to head back again not an option so I ride over to Art where we  regroup for a few minuets.

Twin Lakes one of the most beautiful places i have seen!

Getting to head back from Twin Lakes

As you can see in the pictures the weather has been pretty nice, sun and clouds a bit of a cool breeze but actually really nice riding weather. We start the ride back and I'm having good moments and bad moments, but I clean all the hills, yes these are just hills tomorrow we hit the mountain. Its a fun ride up the single track and once at the top you descend down a hill and a the base is little stinker! 2 in the group actually cleaned it from bottom to top the rest of us don't even try we just hike it up the same as we'll be doing in the race.

Robert at the top of little stinker

Noah cleaning the whole climb

Art at the top of little stinker

We start off again and before we know it were back at the start of Pipline now the sky is starting to get grey and we can see rain in the mountains, oh boy still have 10 miles to go! We continue down the fence line and unto the road when all of the sudden the sky's break loose on us, its an all out storm, heavy rain, hail, and even some lightening and thunder! By now we all have rain gear on but my legs are getting cold from the cold rain and hail, but it actually helped my legs to recover, the bad weather was gone as quick as it showed up and all we have left is the climb back up to town, now my legs are feeling pretty good and ride the last climb up and back to the hostel, we get there soaked. After some food and more food, I sitting here writing this and happy that both Robert and Art didn't let me turn back early I felt much better today than I thought I would, tomorrow were riding up to Columbine Mine, its a 3000+ ft climb, hope I recover!

I have enjoyed my time at the Hostel, the people up here are wonderful, Wild Bill and his wife are wonderful hosts and I would recommend staying here to anyone that visits the town of Leadville, so many fascinating outdoor people here!!