Trip Summary Trip Dates: Aug 16 - Aug 30 Start - End Locations: Boulder, CO/Shuttle to Durango - Boulder, CO Route Notes: CANCELLED Days: 15   Rest Days: 2   Level of Support: Full Miles: 660 Average Miles Per Day: 55 Surface: Road Riders: 14 Type: Supported   Meals: Shared cooking Accommodations: Camping/Indoor Physical Difficulty: Advanced+   Elevation: Elevation alert Airport: Boulder, CO Cost: $1399 Booking Status: Closed

After putting it on hiatus for several years, we re-launched this terrific tour in 2006—and to great acclaim. A major reason we discontinued offering the Great Parks South was because, as a self-contained adventure, it was simply too challenging to attract a lot of riders. So, we brought it back as a vehicle-supported tour, and it appears to have been a wise decision.

There’s still no getting around it, though, the route’s long, steep climbs and thrilling descents are still there, but at least you’ll be riding them with the lightness of being unloaded. So, too, are the gorgeous mountain vistas and high, broad valleys for which Colorado is known around the world. It’s hard-earned terrain that pays back in mountains of dividends.

Heading out from Durango, one of the mountain- and road-biking hotbeds of a state full of bicycle enthusiasts, we’ll climb into the San Juan Range. And, although we’ll remain in the high country for the rest of the tour, the nature of the landscapes we’ll visit vary dramatically as we ride from south to north.

Early on, we’ll visit Mesa Verde National Park, with its classic red-rock canyons and more than six hundred known prehistoric cliff dwellings. These were inhabited by the Anasazi, or ancestral Pueblo people, for some 700 years beginning around A.D. 600. Then, in the late 1200s and in the span of only a few decades, these people seemingly disappeared, abandoning the high, relatively lush plateau looming above the Montezuma and Mancos valleys. Was it drought, aka climate change, that forced them to leave? Or warfare? No one knows for certain. But what is for sure is that this park, particularly mystical in the early morning and at twilight, will cast a spell on you. You may not want to abandon it yourself.

But onward and upward we must go. After visiting the classic ski village of Telluride, we’ll skirt Black Canyon of the Gunnison National Park. Created by the action of water moving down and through crystalline rock, Black Canyon is unique among North American gorges due to its combination of an extremely narrow opening, almost vertical walls, and immense 2,000-foot depths dropping to the Gunnison River.

Subsequent highlights include the Sawatch Range, home to the “fourteeners” known as the Collegiate Peaks (although Mounts Harvard, Yale, Princeton, and Columbia could just as well have been dubbed the Ivy League Peaks). After passing through Summit County, where the bottoms of the mountains are higher than 9,000 feet, we’ll visit the crown jewel of the Colorado high country, Rocky Mountain National Park. The legendary Trail Ridge Road tops out near Fall River Pass an elevation of 12,183 feet, making this the literal high point of our lofty adventure.

As you can imagine, when the road opened back in 1932, it provided motorists with a very big thrill. Seventy-six years later, it’s still quite a drive. And a heckuva bike ride, too.

For more detailed information, see Supported trip logistics.

READY TO GO?
You can sign up for the Great Parks South Colorado tour now. Go to our online sign-up.