Header images by Trent and Stacy Gillespie

A little over a week ago, I found myself standing at the Waterton Canyon Trailhead of the Colorado Trail, after pedaling, pushing, and coasting all 540 miles of the legendary rugged route across the heart of the Rocky Mountains. It had been 6 days and 12 hours since leaving downtown Durango, Colorado, with the 75 determined riders in the grant depart. I was dripping wet from a refreshing rainfall at the top of the final climb, feet mostly numb, knees screaming, unable to sit evenly on the saddle, muscles twitching, but a smile ear to ear.

As a rookie to racing the entire trail, it’s quite difficult to describe the depth of experiences you endure physically and mentally. It was quite a journey, from dreaming about simply riding the full trail years ago to meeting record holders and being unable to wrap my mind around their times and later actually jumping all in and standing on the grand depart line. I’m now reflecting on my own ride after finishing, adding yet another layer to the experience.

Throughout climbing and descending more than 75,000 feet of elevation, with all your own food, water, tools, and shelter strapped to your bicycle, there are too many highs and lows to count on both hands. One of the reasons I wanted to take this challenge on so badly was the singletrack-heavy, high-altitude nature of the route. I’ve spent so much time in nearly every region of Colorado, but not by bicycle across a route of this measure.

The Colorado Trail Race seemed like the ultimate endeavor for me as a lover of nature and self-supported efforts. Having been a photographer for more than half my life, it was truly difficult not to stop so many times to capture the raw beauty, but I couldn’t resist. Using my iPhone and an old GoPro Hero 8, I was able to capture only a small reflection of my time out there on the trail to visually remember the vast landscapes while continuing to move swiftly across the terrain, as long as my body would allow.

Looking back across a six-day finish time, there were hours each day of being alone, stomping up 25-percent grade hike-a-bike sections, and often other times where I’d find other riders stopped having a snack, nap, resupply, or moving at the same pace. Mentally, it was always refreshing to connect with another rider, knowing we were going through something equally as hard and uncomfortable as it was beautiful and enjoyable.

The memories made while racing across the forest will continue to take time to settle in and savor. It’s a time warp mixed with sweat, blood, saddle sores, welted tongue sores from sugar and salt overdose, adrenaline-spiking 3 a.m. mountain lion sightings, and deep, exhausted sleep on vault toilet floors. It’s sharing a pint of melted Ben and Jerry’s trailside, racing to Silverton in 16 hours for a hot meal, being woken up in the park by sprinklers instead of your alarm, blowing rear tires from ripping downhill, and calling your friends to scratch and them saying, “No, you can do this.”

It’s a line of five single speeders pushing up half the climbs on day one together like a train moving across the terrain, eating handfuls of wild raspberries on Sargents Mesa, waiting an extra hour for a coffee shop to open so you can get espresso in your drip coffee, pedaling with one leg so the other can rest, rubbing sunscreen on sores because you forgot the special ointment, rationing your gas station calories when you miss kitchen close for a resupply, and encouraging everyone you come across on the trail because just to be out there is to be an incredible accomplishment no matter the distance, speed, age, or effort.

There’s so much more to unpack that instead I think I’ll have to race the Colorado Trail again to build layers of stories like rings on a tree stump, giving a chapter to each year, rather than only one ring being the full story.

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