North Jeffco Open Spaces

I decided to head out on Saturday to do a longer ride. Nothing all too special, just some of my local favorites. The weather was cold and windy. I wore my jacket and leg warmers most of the day. Every once in a while on the climbs I'd have to unzip the pits and roll down the warmers.

I tried to start out the day with a little flying since the field is on my way to White Ranch, but when I got to the field and checked the wind speeds (>30mph) I decided to skip it.

White Ranch--Mustang:

White Ranch -- Longhorn:

The start of Chimney Gulch:

Apex--Pick-n-Sledge:

Bike path--notice the snow coming over the mountains? I thought I was going to get hit with it but everytime the clouds would leave the front range, they would quickly dissipate to nothing but a cold wind...

North Table Mountain with Denver in a graupel storm:

North Table Mtn--West side:
All in all, I had a good time even with the cold conditions. My goal for the day was to stay on the bike for more than 5 hrs and I ended up at a little over 7hrs. I purposely didn't look at the stats on the GPS until today. I thought I would be really disappointed...40 miles, 12K vert...no...12K? Really? I didn't believe it...No way...The GPS MUST be wrong...So I downloaded the DEM elevation instead of relying on the GPS...Even with a modest correction of only accepting elevation gain if it was greater than 2 meters the vert came out to 9K. Still much better than I had thought.(GPX)