Mt. Evans Hill Climb

While the 17-18s were racing the 43rd Annual Tour de L'abitibi, I was at home in Colorado racing one of my favorite races, the 46th Annual Mt. Evans Hill Climb.  Mount Evans is one 54 14,000 foot mountains in Colorado and it has a road that goes all the way to the top.  The climb is 28.5 miles long and although it is not steep it is extremely difficult and it can be below freezing at the top and snowing in the summer time not to mention the fact that the summit of the mountain is at 14,264 ft making it the highest paved road in North America.

Mt. Evans has been won by the likes of Jonathan Vaughters, Scott Moninger, Ned Overend and of course Tom Danielson who holds the course record.  This means that every year the race is going to be hard and it was just that this year.  The climb starts in Idaho Springs, a town just west of Denver, the climb starts with 7 miles up a canyon and then another 7 miles of steeper grades until the pay station for the Mt. Evans highway.  The second half of the climb is the hardest part because the pay station is at 10,000 feet.  Another 4 miles past the pay station is where the treeline ends and 5 miles from the summit is Summit Lake where there is snow all year round off the road and there is permafrost under the road.  After Summit Lake the starts to get hard because of thin air and cold temperature and steeper grades.  This is when road is actually on Mt. Evans and the road soon turns into a series of about 15 switchbacks in 3 miles that get extremely difficult a mile from the top.  Mt. Evans can be likened to Alp d'Huez with its switchbacks except harder.

 A few miles from the summit high winds are common.

Switchback at 13,000 feet.

Summit Lake 12,000 feet 5 miles from the summit.  

Training ride at the top.

Enough about the climb and about the race.  There aren't a lot of tactics in a hill climb especially one this long it is pretty much just being the strongest rider.  The climb up the canyon was very fast and when got to mile 7 there was an acceleration and until Echo Lake where the pay station is the race was fast and gets a little bit steeper and riders were getting dropped.  That day it was windy, windier than usual and the wind was coming from the South mostly instead of the West making some nasty headwinds.  The race stayed steady for past treeline and the road goes mostly South for awhile and stayed hard and although I was suffering I was staying with the front off the race until Summit Lake where there were some attacks.  After that the road becomes steeper again, it is pretty flat even downhill by the lake and I couldn't hold the speed.  Around a kilometer later I could see that race pretty exploded and there wasn't really a group anymore.  I finished 16th in the race in 2:01:27 slower than my time the year before when I won the cat 3 race in 2:00:30 and the winner did 1:57:37 making the times this year very slow.  Peter Stetina won in 1:50:00 last year and Tom Danielson has the record of 1:41:20 a record I would like to beat one day.

-Dean Haas