by Chris Tredway

Created on: February 28, 2009   Last Updated: March 01, 2009

A downhill story

The lights of three cities were visible far off to the east, thick puddles of orange and white glittering on the high plains, linked by faint streams of suburbia and illuminated stretches of interstate. And the Toyota climbed higher still, winding through switchbacks and hugging the mountainside in its painful ascent to the top of the world. Deprived of oxygen, the four-cylinder engine groaned and sputtered as the driver downshifted and demanded more speed, the roadway snaking its way across the alpine tundra.

I watched the city lights in the distance from an open window at the rear of the enclosed truck bed, trying to grasp how many people were living in those electric puddles, wondering if all those lights were really necessary and if the headlamp strapped to my head would be enough for what was about to go down.

The truck came to a halt in an empty parking lot outside the Alpine Visitor Center in Rocky Mountain National Park a little after 1 a.m., the tired engine coughing and wheezing at 11,796 feet. The wind was a wild animal, howling as it whipped through nearby rock formations and causing our clothes to flap so hard they hurt. There were four of us that night atop the Continental Divide, pulling our mountain bikes from the bed of the truck and carefully assembling them while glancing at one another in search of confirmation that yes, this was happening.

Rolling in single file by the light of headlamps, we reached the end of the parking lot and clutched our brakes as the pavement turned to dirt and Old Fall River Road dropped into the darkness. It was the first road to cross the Rocky Mountains in northern Colorado, a 14-foot wide dirt track with 16 switchbacks over nine miles, cut into the mountainside and completed in 1920. It has since been delegated a one-way scenic route from the town of Estes Park at 7,522 feet above sea level to heights of Fall River Pass, an elevation gain of more than 4,200 grueling feet. And not a single guardrail.

The four-person downhill expedition took place at night to avoid being fined by national park rangers, as the seasonal road was closed due to snow and we were headed in the wrong direction. Speed became an interesting problem as the route hit grades of 16 percent, our headlamps only reached so far into the dark, and patches of snow appeared out of nowhere. The sound of sliding tires and squealing brake pads came with less frequency as adrenaline levels plateaued and we learned to slide through each turn

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