Trek Dual Sport 4: Road-tested in the Colorado Rockies! Part 3

Five days, not a lot of distance, but lots of climbing and some serious gravel! Here’s how the bike held up …

Route Overview

For those who are curious, I’ll post separately about how we settled on this route. In short, it was a 5-day tour, with not a lot of distance (if you like to ride centuries, ie 100-mile days on your bike tours, good for you! Personally, I’m happy riding 20–30 miles a day). It was about 150 miles.

We planned for only about 20 miles on the first two days to give us more time to acclimate before attempting the serious climbs on days 3 and 5. Little did we know that the hardest part of the trip would not actually involved climbing — it was trying to get down! the east side of Rollins Pass, which is a seriously rocky road that is way more brutal than any terrain we’ve encountered anywhere in the world, including off-road in Tibet, between Everest Base Camp and the Friendship Highway.

Day 1. Nederland → Peaceful Valley Campground (a bit north of Ward)

Day 2. Peaceful Valley → Estes Park

Day 3. Estes Park→ Grand Lake via Fall River Road and Trail Ridge RRoad

Day 4. → Grand Lake → Winter Park

Day 5. Winter Park → Rollins Pass → Nederland