After the 2007 Leadville 100 mountain bike race, Dean Cahow wrote a cool article for Colorado Serenity. Dean is a regular on the Yahoo Leadville 100 Group. I hadn’t signed up for Leadville in 2007 so I roamed the course taking photos. My photos were used for the article. Dean gave me permission to post his article but I never got it posted back then.
Leadville: Two Wheels, One Hundred Miles
By Dean Cahow
Photographs courtesy of Rob Lucas
August 12th the morning after the 2007 Leadville Trail 100 Mountain Bike race, five-time champion Dave Wiens of Gunnison speaks to an assembly of hundreds of racers and their supporters, race volunteers, and staff. Accepting the champion’s award for his hard-fought victory in the 100 mile race, Wiens shared openly emotional pride, passion, and respect for the race and his fellow racers. “We all share the same experiences out there. We feel the same things, endure the same things. We climb to Columbine Mine together; we all suffer the North Face and the Power Line and that heinous Boulevard. We share the same pain and rewards. This race is the cherry. This is the race that motivates me, that I look forward to every year, every day beginning in January. You know how it is.” And the racers do know how it is, though few can touch the tremendous pace set by their champion.
The American West is rich with lore and legend of hard living, colorful characters, and wild extremes. Most locales of such note have faded into history or changed with the times, perhaps selling memories of years bygone. Leadville Colorado’s history is among the hardest and most colorful of the Wild West, and so it will continue. Leadville lives true to its past, because it can live no other way. It stands rugged and defiant against the challenges of life at 10,200 feet above sea level.
Colorado’s highest mountain peak, Mount Elbert (14,440 feet), and the aptly named Mount Massive (14,421 feet) crown the Sawatch Mountains draping Leadville’s westerly visage. The spine of the Mosquito Mountains on the east demarks the continental divide and imposes a formidable horizon over which the sun rises to fill the high valley with light and warmth. Look north to the Gore Mountains and the headwater of the Arkansas River. The Arkansas tumbles by way of Leadville and south, gaining snow pack runoff from the flanking ranges.
Stunning geography and geology have shaped Leadville’s human character and fate for one hundred and fifty years. Her rewards are rich but realized only by those of spirit appropriate to her challenges. The record is that of seekers: men and women who have risen to risk themselves against the extra measure not common in the world known to most. The town is the sum of the remarkable personalities that built it with the strength of their resolve.
Sporting competition is a natural extension of the character of Leadville. The small town is large in attracting adventurous endurance athletes to regionally and nationally renowned extreme challenges with the extra element that is uniquely Leadville. Snowshoe racing, pack burro racing, ultra-marathons, and mountain bike races each demand something more when commenced above 10,000 feet of elevation onto hardscrabble mountains. Crude roads and steep tracks once delivered men to and ore from remote mines. Today, they offer men and women exploration of spellbinding landscapes and of themselves. Since 1994, one of these explorations has been the Leadville Trail 100 Mountain Bike Race, billed as The Race Across the Sky. It inspires entry applications from across the United States and foreign lands. From these, selection by organizers and a lottery determine the field of riders endorsed to mass at the starting line on the second Saturday of August.
Many find that having raced at Leadville is to have purchased with guts, rit, and determination an improbable bond with a heaving stripe chiseled into an inspiring panorama. The race is largely an out and back course, the second half retracing the first. Facets encountered outbound are met again in the opposite direction with inverted effect, adding an ironic intimacy to such an expansive undertaking. To the rest of the world, features such as the Saint Kevin (pronounced Kee-vin) mines, Green Gate trail, Sugarloaf Mountain, The Power Line, The Pipeline, The North Face, The Columbine Mine, and The Boulevard may be curious map designations. To those who’ve raced the Leadville 100, they are deeply personal experiences.
Dave Wiens’ 2007 duel with former national mountain bike champion Floyd Landis prompted his post-race declaration,
“That was the hardest and best mountain bike race of my life. Mentally, physically, it was brutal.” Californian Landis, now a road cycling champion and 2006 Tour de France winner, pushed Wiens hard from start to finish. Both men broke the previous course record, with the edge going to Wiens. Third place went to Colorado mountain biking legend and world-class adventure racer, Mike Moser of Vail. Boulder based Pro, Gretchen Reeves, recovered to nail the women’s division win after struggling on a late-race climb.
Massed for an early morning start from the center of Leadville, hundreds of racers and an enormous entourage of spirit gather. Aimed west toward Mount Massive, bikes and their pilots wait to begin a great adventure. What adventure will they meet? Each has committed hours upon hours and miles upon miles over many months training for this opportunity. That opportunity presents when race announcer and Leadville Mayor Bud Elliot unloads a 12-gauge shotgun’s report into the crisp morning air over the town. Good luck, good weather, good legs, and good lungs are hoped for by all. Mostly they hope to perform to the best of their preparation. Many would admit to hoping for even a little better than that.
Finishing the race once is a noteworthy accomplishment. Three much-admired ]ads have started and finished each of the fourteen editions. Many others are proud of their multiple finishes. Additional hundreds of “Lead Heads” are working on their own legacy. To record an official finish, the 100-mile course must be completed in less than twelve hours, recognized by award of a prized, Leadville 100 silver belt buckle and a race edition sweatshirt personalized with name and finishing time. Those crossing the finish line in under nine hours are similarly awarded, but distinguishing the outstanding achievement of their performance the buckle is a larger, gold and silver model. Top finishers in age and gender categories are additionally honored with trophies and other laurels. Every finisher earns the respect of their fellow starters, the family and friends who came to Leadville to support their effort, the citizens of Leadville who turn out in droves to witness the spectacle and cheer them on, the volunteers who give long hours of support to keep alive their pursuit of the finish line, and the inspirational organizers of the race whose unshakable belief and mantra is, “‘You’re better than you think you are, and you can do more than you think you can.”
On route to finishing times ranging from seven to twelve hours, seven hundred racers that depart Leadville together at 6:30 am will string out considerably as the race unfurls across Lake County, Chaffee County, and San Isabel National Forest. Little more than three and a half hours into the contest, Wiens made the halfway point, 12,600 feet heavenward, and let loose his return to Leadville with an electrifying descent from the long abandoned Columbine Mine atop Quail Mountain. The climb to that turn is the longest and tallest of the day, rising 3,600 feet from Twin Lakes Reservoir into and above Lost Canyon. Lost Canyon’s forested walls frame views across the famed Colorado Trail and the Arkansas River valley that on another day would demand pause. Above timberline, the canyon winnows onto raw tundra where the air is so thin an athlete’s ability to absorb muscle-fueling oxygen is reduced by 20 to 25 percent. Upon this sparse rockscape, still far away on a horizon high above, the turnaround point is revealed. The sight can be a blow to the psyche. Potentially consoling, absolutely brilliant views to grand neighboring peaks are apt to go underappreciated. Meanwhile, six hundred climbing racers are stretched out along the entire length of the ascent. They defy their inner cry for oxygen and respite. Two strenuous climbs and more than forty miles of intense output are the fee demanded to embark on the Columbine Climb. The cost is great. Failure of bike, body, or mind feeds attrition that will swell by day’s end to consume almost two hundred riders.
After the arduous experience of the Columbine climb and descent, the surviving racers, lead by Wiens and Landis, are justifiably pleased to be heading toward Leadville, with more miles ridden than yet to ride. But harsh challenges are yet to come. Vigor extracted by each mile ridden cannot be replenished to meet those ahead. The outbound fide provides each rider with an overturned experience on the profile to be ridden inbound. The ups become downs and the downs., ups. The second half of the race is pocked with nasty pitches and heaves. leading to, at mile eighty, the base of the infamous Power Line climb. It is the most talked about, anticipated, and dreaded single challenge on the course. It’s the twelve labors of Hercules rolled into one.
Outbound, the Power Line is the most treacherous four miles of the hundred. Clawed onto the southern exposure of Sugarloaf Mountain, it is easily discernible from miles away. It is another legacy of Leadville’s mining history. Abandoned, 120year-old mine trails are the foundation of the route, since linked by construction crews clearing a swathe for the high-tension power lines that gave it a name.
The Power Line alternates between steep, crooked traverses and straight fall line plunges. The surface is either jagged and rocky or hard packed with loose sandy topping. Its steep grades bear extensive, deep, and overlapping erosion scars. It is thrilling or frightening, depending on your personality and cycling skill set. It is the trap that springs more crashes than anywhere else on the course.
After eighty miles of hard racing, the elements that made the descent what it was conspire with gravity and the hot August sun to make the inbound climb hellish. The Columbine climb is touted as the race’s signature feature, but racers will tell you the Power Line climb is the heart of the matter.
“The Power Line reveals a lot. You become basic: stripped of ego, pretense, and bravado. There is little left but the real you. On the Power Line, you find out who that is.”-Leadville 100 veteran, Will Dean
Four miles on the Power Line crests three false summits before topping Sugarloaf Mountain. With twenty miles to go, the race is 80 percent in the bag. Racers must dig deep to find the strength and will to push their pace over the remaining distance. The biggest climbs are behind them, but there is still climbing to do. Most of the miles are behind them, but there are still twenty miles to go. The finish line is still at least an hour and a half of hard effort away.
Hours of common trial create a bond of camaraderie that those lacking the common experience cannot participate in. But those who have spent the day rooting, feeding, thrilling for, and anguishing for the racers are the brothers, sisters, friends, children, parents, husbands, wives, side line admirers, race volunteers, and staff that participate in all that is best of the Leadville Trail 100 Mountain Bike Race. They are the other side of the race and a lasting gift to the racers. Throughout the afternoon, they return to town from positions out along the course to share the hundreds of moments that culminate hundreds of races and thousands of hours of individual effort. The racers are coming home to Leadville.
With less than half a mile to the finish, after all those other miles, over the top of a small rise at the bottom of 6th Street, the finish line is dead ahead. A large red banner is suspended over the street and the heads of a crowd that welcomes each rider in. Smooth pavement slopes toward the final block before rising slightly to the finish. Every racer who makes it here has succeeded in a very personal and fundamental way, from record-setting champion Dave Wiens (6:58:46) to Thomas Hurley of Mattapoisett, Massachusetts, the final official finisher at 11:59:01. The hearts of the crowd greet them upon their triumph with cheers, claps, whistles, and stomps. None could be unmoved by the reception.
Returning home after the race, Floyd Landis posted compliments at his Web site (floydlandis.com) to Leadville race directors Merilee O’Neil and Ken Chlouber for building “one of the most impressive and challenging one-day races anywhere in the world.” Like many other Leadville freshmen, Landis also declared his intent to make it an annual devotion.
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