Carl Fogeled in part:
>Sorry, but I doubt that you'll find a paved road in Colorado
>to impress an experienced California rider like Jobst. Nor
>do I think that Jobst would be scared of the dirt mining
>roads that you mention.
That's quite possible. Peronally, I am not
frightened by steep, difficult climbs. I am
much more frightened by long flat stretches.
>As for wondering whether Colorado trails like Imogene have
>an equal in difficulty in Europe, here's where you can do a
>little browsing and widen your experience:
>
>http://ciclismo.sitiasp.it/motore.aspx?sid=3f7fb0062738450f98c5d3a6e380c0
89&quanti=20&ID=4&da=az&come=af&lingua=eng&commenti=False
>
>Select "difficulty" and then select "all" and here's what
>the database considers the most difficult climb submitted so
>far:
>
>http://www.salite.ch/scanuppia.htm
>
>True, it starts at only around 600 feet about sea level and
>is only about 4 miles long, but the average grade is 17.6%
>and the profile shows about a kilometer at 25% to >?28%.
Come to think of it, you can find a road like that
at almost every single ski area in Colorado.
Imogene Pass, on the Telluride side, sustains
18-20% for its final 3k stretch to the summit
at, get this, 13,114 feet above sea level.
When you're climbing grades like that over
12,000 feet, it's a whole different ballgame.
Europe can't match that. Mosquito, Argentine,
and many other passes in Colorado are similar.
Imogene I think is the toughest I have ridden
so far.
http://tinyurl.com/4hcrp
(The mileage cues on this jpeg are from a foot race
held each year over Imogene, from Ouray to
Telluride. I've only ridden the Telluride side. Notice
the brutality comes on the left side of the map,
climbing into and out of the aptly named Savage
Basin from the old Tomboy camp, which was
repeatedly swept off the mountain by avalanches
while it was inhabited in the late 19th and early
20th Century.)
Here's a fuzzy picture of the pass from the
Telluride ski mountain. You can't really see the hard
part of the climb in this picture, though:
http://www.imogenerun.com/images/ricspics/r01.jpg
If anybody's planning on coming out from California
to try these passes, I'd suggest starting with
some of the more tame options, like Engineer,
Cinnamon, or even the low and smooth Weston,
just to see if you can deal with the pronounced lack
of air pressure before losing your lunch on our big
daddy climbs.
In this old interview, Johnathon Vaughters, a Colorado
climber who set an astounding record on Mont Ventoux,
gives his opinion of European versus Colorado climbs
in pro races:
"Any climb in Europe is a little bit more power-based,
even the long climbs; since you're down at a lower
altitude, you've got more oxygen, so the game is a little
more power-oriented. When you're doing races in Colorado,
you're up at a really high altitude to begin with, so it has
a little bit more to do with really pacing yourself and
adapting your body to get used to working in really thin air."
While the Euro climbs are steeper, Vaughters mentions
Guanella Pass as one with the rare combination of
high altitude and grade. In the Saturn Classic, a race
that Vaughters has not surprisingly won (140 miles,
14,000 feet of climbing), Guanella Pass is rated
hors categorie (HC) on the Euro-freak scale.
Robert
