Loveland Pass on the FJR

Day off, roads wet, clouds sitting low on the high stuff. I rode over Loveland Pass, the long way over a mountain most everybody drives straight through.

We drive past this turnoff every day. If you'd rather watch the Divide than white-knuckle it, our Denver to Vail private car service runs I-70 in every season.

From the house on Bellflower it's about an hour to the bottom of the pass. I-70 east over Vail Pass, down through Frisco, off at Silverthorne, Exit 205. There you trade the interstate for US Highway 6 and the whole thing slows down: through Dillon, along the reservoir, past Keystone, and the road starts to tilt up.

Loveland Pass tops out at 11,990 feet, right on the Continental Divide. It's said to be the highest road in the country kept open year-round. The Eisenhower–Johnson Tunnel bores straight through the mountain underneath it, four lanes of I-70, the highest vehicle tunnel in the world. Most everybody takes the tunnel. The pass is the old way over the top, the way it was done before they drilled the hole in 1973.

Arapahoe Basin

Before the real climb starts you roll right past A-Basin, and A-Basin is the opposite of everything around it. No village. No real estate. A bar and a cafeteria in the lodge and some of the highest, steepest terrain in Colorado. It's the standout mountain in Summit County and it's a skier's mountain, plain and simple.

The terrain backs that up. The East Wall above the front side is hike-to extreme that skis like the backcountry without being it, and dropping over the back into Montezuma Bowl about doubles the mountain. Almost none of it is groomed-cruiser country. You come to A-Basin to work.

That's the bike parked under the Pallavicini lift, Pali, the steep one. Right at the bottom of it sits The Beach, A-Basin's front-row tailgate lot, grills going, ski-in and ski-out. Used to be you just showed up and found a spot. Now The Beach takes a reservation, and it's worth it on the right day. A-Basin runs the longest season in the state, October clear into June, so even now there's snow hanging up top and the place only just shut down for the winter.

The Climb

Past the Basin the trees thin out and the road gets serious. Switchbacks, a steady six or seven percent, and in a lot of places no guardrail at all. This is where you get signs you don't see many other places. Warning, back country users, avalanche blasting at any time using long range weaponry. Read that twice. They fire artillery at the snowfields up here on purpose, on a schedule, to bring the slides down on their own terms instead of waiting for the mountain to pick the time. Thirty-some years in these mountains and that sign still makes me grin inside the helmet.

Car Skiing & the Backcountry

There are no lifts on the pass itself, and that's exactly why skiers love it. Loveland Pass is famous for car skiing, shuttle skiing. You drop your buddies at the top, they ride a line down to one of the switchbacks below, and you swing down and scoop them up at the next pull-off. Swap drivers and run it again. Cheapest lift ticket in Colorado: a tank of gas and a friend who'll drive.

But know what it really is. This is true backcountry, no patrol, no ropes, nobody firing those long-range rounds to make the slope safe for you. The terrain off both sides of the top is no joke, and people die out here. Some of the worst avalanches in the state have come off these mountains. The slope doesn't care that it's your day off. If you go out there, go with people who know it, carry a beacon, and respect it.

The Road the Tankers Take

Here's the thing a guy who drives for a living can't help but notice. Coming the other way around a switchback was a fuel tanker, a green Pete hauling a full load up and over at walking pace. Hazardous loads aren't allowed in the Eisenhower Tunnel. Neither is anything over 13 feet 11 inches tall. So every fuel truck and propane load that keeps the High Country warm and running grinds over Loveland Pass instead, summer and winter, in every kind of weather. Everybody else goes under the mountain. The tankers go over the top.

When the Interstate Closes

Today it's a day off, wet roads, low cloud, nothing you can't ride. It isn't always. This past winter I came over this same top in the Suburban, in daylight, when I-70 was shut down, and when the interstate closes, everything spills onto Highway 6. That's the deal up here. The tunnel goes dark and the whole corridor funnels over the pass.

Middle of the afternoon, and I couldn't see the hood of my own truck.

It whited out so completely near the summit that I couldn't see the hood of the Suburban. Not the edge of the road, not the lane lines, the hood. So I stopped, right where I was, and sat. Up here most of the road has no guardrail, and that's on purpose: it gives the plows somewhere to throw the snow, straight off the side. Which means there's nothing between you and a long way down but knowing the road and knowing when to quit moving.

People hear our rule, if the road's open, we go, and think it means you put your head down and push through anything. It means the opposite. It means we read the road, and we know when to stop dead in the middle of one, in the middle of the day, and wait until we can see again.

And it's the same skill in everything we drive. Low grip is low grip, a rear-drive Sprinter, an all-wheel-drive Suburban, or a bike leaned over in the rain. The machine changes; the physics don't. Smooth inputs, eyes up the road. Never ask a tire for more than it's got, and know when it's telling you it's about out. That's the part you can't fake, and it's why "we know these roads" means something when it's wet over Loveland and it's us behind the wheel.

The Continental Divide, 11,990 Feet

The summit is a wide dirt pull-off with the old Forest Service monument, Loveland Pass, Elevation 11,990 Ft, Continental Divide. Snowmelt on one side of that sign eventually finds the Pacific; on the other side it finds the Atlantic. The wind never quits up there. You can stand at the rail and watch the I-70 corridor far below, cars and trucks streaming toward the tunnel portal, while you're a thousand-some feet above all of it with the engine ticking as it cools. On a weekday in spring I mostly had it to myself.

Home

Down the Clear Creek side it's switchbacks again, past Loveland Ski Area, back onto I-70 at Exit 216. I came home the lazy way, under the mountain, through the tunnel. Over the top one direction, under it the other. Best kind of day off there is.