The Telluride HELLRIDE - Impossible Route Cycling Documentary (ep.4)

[Music] so [Music] [Applause] so [Music] [Applause] [Music] ah engineer pass descent so bumpy so steep there's like i'm just waiting for that moment where you realize i've broken something i see a little black [Music] [Music] which is crazy to think that we have done four life long like achievements like if you just did one of these in your life you would feel accomplished we've done four of them in one year [Music] and this one this episode to be honest i i probably should have bowed out i am the guy here to depict the average joe's story of this impossible route i am so far out of my element not only is the course just alone ridiculous this route but then the people that i'm with is going to push me so far beyond what i am capable of my name is ryan petrie i am a professional mountain biker and my career is doing long rides because that's just what i love to do [Music] so last year my it band flared up really bad since then it was kind of an issue every day i would spend 30 minutes to an hour on pt and just foam rolling and everything i possibly could because all i want to do is be out in the mountains and be able to do these things that i live for if i want to keep doing this career and i want to keep being able to do these things that i absolutely live for i need to get to the bottom of this so basically all this past winter it's been rehab it's been how do i re-center my body unfortunately in that process i had a bunch of back issues uh some si joint i've got a couple surgeries and it really made me hone in on like why do i do this like why you know i have to do so much pt and spending so much money and just be able to ride my bike but every day i looked in the mountains and i said i this is why i do it and the motivation was extremely high all i've wanted to do is do a big ride in the mountains [Music] to take on the impossible route that was going to be my biggest challenge that i've had in years and frankly i was really nervous [Music] my name is jeremiah bishop two-time national mountain bike champion adventure cyclist and we're here in beautiful telluride we just finished up the telluride hell ride which by all accounts is probably the most ridiculous route that i've ever taken on one day [Music] and that's what i love to do i love these projects of coming and doing something that i'm not prepared to do that i haven't put a whole lot of like thought into i'm just gonna jump into something and see what i can do i like doing that but at a certain point you're to find your limit and this one that found the limit [Music] at a certain point we kind of go through this switchback and it opens up to this view that's just like this can't be real like if the matrix exists this is programmed like that's what i was like almost thinking i like if i was gonna make something in a video game this would be it [Music] [Music] tyler pierce [Music] ryan p [Music] train jeremiah bishop [Music] the telling ride hell ride [Music] so it's 130 and about 22 000 feet of climbing um if you just did the core of the main route that's that's doable this was kind of like one of those ideas that came together over the course of several years so last night is 8 21 pm first light is at 6 00 am so if you average 10 miles per hour yeah hunky dory that would be easy so jeremiah first sent me the route and i looked at some of the passes i kind of looked at it quickly i was like that sounds awesome like i'm in but then i dissected a little bit more and kind of understood what the goal and the time frame was yeah like a 10 mil on our average seems like you're going like three up right but then down it's not just like road biking where it's like oh let's go 50 miles an hour for the next 20 minutes so each climb gets sequentially harder 14 and a half hours i mean this is the equivalent of like a 250 mile road ride put it this way impossible around mauna kea that was only 17 000 feet of climbing and we were ready to die and get iv in our arms when we finished that's going to be halfway and then it was like i don't know if these guys really know what these passes are it's just it's you don't move quickly out here and being in colorado and i've done a bunch of rides over these passes i know that there's so much hiking and i know that it's a totally different mindset and miles don't come quickly so i was optimistic and i was excited to get out there but i couldn't help but just think we're gonna take this as it comes because i have a feeling these guys don't know what's ahead of them you know the profile kind of looks like small pass medium pass really big pass really really big pass but you don't have anything to judge it by but literally if you put like a category one famous tour de france climb it would be like the size the smallest pass we did i mean honestly just look at them the steepness the difficulty the surface the altitude the duration all these factors combined to make it an impossible route i mean really really do feel it was worthy of the moniker this time okay so the main thing that's going on is that uh we were supposed to ride the grizzle with the suspension fork we couldn't get that in time so we're going to run mountain bikes but my personal mountain bike my forks just blew out so then we had to ship this bike or come with this bike without forks and now we're trying to place some forks on here and we're leaving in how many hours this is the impossible route way is to just be dangling on the thread of actually starting and then somehow pull off a miracle yes yeah we'll look at it we'll get here i mean are you seeing this elevation profile yeah and it shows like the dark red like that saying that that's a road yeah it's actually blood that you're riding through there's not a lot not a road i'm just hoping we um didn't forget some important detail the the main detail is that they're pro mountain bikers and i'm not i'm not even a pro anything it was nice to be able to you know just jump right into this thing and also you know not really have time to overthink it last year i did a ride similar to this where i went over a bunch of passes i was more near boulder but like we did 90 miles with like thousand feet of climbing that was the average and it took us nine to ten hours a day so the question is is it possible i mean you're the expert for colorado you like live up here right up here i mean it's essentially double what i was doing on those days do i think that i could have done two of those in one day so we set out a time limit for this all these other projects we've made harder and harder and harder and this one we wanted to make it as hard as we possibly could like the hardest one day route ever and uh so the one day thing i was like kind of stoked on because we're not camping in the middle of nowhere but um also what's the time limit here because do we start at two in the morning and give ourselves more hours but then you're not really able to capture any film also super dangerous to go down some of these descents in the falling off dark bear pass that's why pass yeah with the jeep flipped over yes that's bad let's not do that 130 with 22 000 feet of climbing you know i say i'm not like the stolen we give it a go that's that's the core route so we we landed on we're gonna start at five we're gonna roll at five and then basically at 8 21 pm which is officially dark see how far you can go every one of these i've started knowing i'm gonna finish like it doesn't matter i'm gonna finish that's not where my mindset is it's more just finish as much as i can set an alarm for 8 21 pm lux and exceed are the bikes that we chose for this mission the mountains here especially above tree run are exceptionally bony a lot of loose rocks really really steep high altitude the combination of difficulty made the mountain bikes the way to go we've been really under biked for a lot of these impossible route missions and i think it was finally time we picked the right bike for the job so i was really stoked about how the bikes performed just felt like the setup was really ideal for the route so i've been riding in the mountains all summer i spent a lot of time in crested butte so my bike i was on the my lux which i think was a really great choice for this and i sort of i just got off racing leadville uh so physically i was kind of prepared for this mentally the training was there uh so i didn't really change anything i whatever my bike was seemed to be right for being in the mountains so besides that keep it simple we're gonna go we're gonna ride until 8 21 and whoever has the most elevation wins [Music] how are you feeling this one uh eager to get going and we drove in late last night so i don't really know what this place looks like um and so there's like going to be this grand reveal as we're climbing i'm excited about that i'm feeling surprisingly awake um i've been looking forward to this one for a while there's just something magical about like being right here on the edge and kind of looking over and having no idea how it's gonna go i don't know i'm like a kid on christmas these are my adventure shoes for hiking lots when you put these on you know you're in for a day ah again it's just one day so you know four minutes to start last go so the first one that we did death valley i said we're going into the unknown and that's what all of these are there are routes that have never been done before that you've never ridden before i really like that i really like that you don't know what's coming up you don't know what's going to be difficult you don't know what part of the course is going to be so stupid um and so that's a problem for future me so it kind of makes me like not so anxious we're just going into the unknown we'll figure it out when we get there i'm excited this is what i live for riding this these high mountain passes is what i think these bikes are meant for it'll be fun to get up there and see how many of them we can do the telluride hell ride is inspired by my late friend ben sontag's love of the high mountains the route's a combination of some of his favorite high alpine passes in colorado 27 000 feet of climbing and 139 miles it's absolutely insane each of these passes gets progressively bigger and more menacing which doubles down on the effort the surfaces vary from packed dirt on the forest sections to loose gravel and even bagel style stones above tree line this sort of moving rock seems devoid of anything holding it together so it makes every foot climbed above treeline feel even harder right away first up are ophir pass followed by red mountain pass after these 45-minute warm-up climbs we took on the hour long corkscrew pass and cinnamon pass before getting to the real giants the last three passes i mean these are the stuff of nightmares each one of these ascents could be an all day ride for some people you're pushing the bike you're grinding the lowest gear and sometimes it's better to hop off and push and just save your quads a little bit less grinding the last three passes engineer pass imogene pass and black bear pass all top out at a long searing 13 000 feet hitting these hardest climbs exhausted and at the end of an all-day ride is part of what makes this route just insane to try to take on in one day but i guess that's why it's called the telluride all right we're here for the tell you ride hell ride as uh we're we're calling it yeah um it's gonna be an all-day thing uh these guys are at home here on their mountain bikes as could possibly be i have not been on my mountain bike in months um so it's gonna yeah i'm gonna be struggling but uh we're gonna see can these guys finish the whole course i mean can they complete the thing can they get to the top of bear mountain right yeah black bear pass black bear i think it's highly ambitious but uh you know we're out here we're gonna try to see how many passes we can knock out and you know i think we're really really lucky to be able to do stuff like this there are not many people that can do this and you know one day we'll be old i mean i'm already like right looking at the edge of it so i'm just starting to get out there and just do something uh you know really exciting and and generally different and think about all the people that support us so let's rock let's do it into the unknown yeah boom boom all right [Music] rolling to the start downtown telluride tyler how you feeling uh nervous dude i haven't been on this bike in like months and i mean i haven't been a little unfamiliar with how the setup is but it's all good [Applause] [Music] it was so difficult so technical and so hard to climb up this first thing five minutes into the ride that i honestly was thinking about just quitting editing myself out of this whole thing it'd just be jeremiah and ryan because i was so pegged instantly i could see my heart rate i was zoned for heart rate just to stay with these guys and so i was really scared of how this day was gonna go within the first five or ten minutes when you're starting to project what the day is going to be like and if this is any indication of what it's going to be like your boy's in trouble [Music] [Music] so i had not seen any of this at all like what's behind me i had no idea i have no idea what to expect and we start riding up this pass and it is perfect like it's just unbelievable the views are so unbelievable but it's contrasted with oh my goodness this is so amazing that i have this opportunity to do this i can't believe i am here life rips to then the realization that you're having to now ride over the most difficult terrain i have personally ever ridden over it is huge marbled rocks they're all moving in like different directions it's so steep and so you know look i'm with two pro mountain bikers and they're having trouble staying on their bike ryan instantly gets off his bike and is walking and i'm just trying to take cue from them and so i'm i'm doing that and you know this pass you can just see forever like you can see future you is is not happy like way up the road so we decided to roll out in the dark and meet the sunrise hopefully at the top of the first pass an overpass was really where we got a true taste of the alpine passes here i mean these passes are epic i'm kind of thinking okay we got this little hill to climb and of course on the strava profile it looks like the least difficult of them right and then it climbs and climbs and you're going through the forest just beautiful pre-dawn light and then we turn the corner and you just see these two big shadows and this road squiggling like a line etched into the sky like oh [ __ ] sometimes in these impossible routes we kind of have this aha moment where the plans on paper diverge from the harsh reality that we are now facing and it was at this moment they realized they had made a big mistake it's good to have the hiking shoes on for the marathon of hiking we're gonna do today this is what these passes are and everyone thinks oh dirt road you're gonna take the gravel bikes out no no how are the gravel bikes have been out here they're terrible the elevation is no joke here so i'm looking at my heart rate i don't have power but i'm looking at my heart rate and at just maintaining a speed to move forward you know i'm at zone three heart rate minimum so i know that that's going to be a huge issue for me later because once you burn a match at elevation you can never get it back and so you really have to pace yourself but i am with these two beyond human riders i i need to make sure that i'm with them as long as possible so that we don't have to split the film crew on the very first climb so i dug really deep on this first pass we're on and off the bike we're pushing you know we're kind of realizing yeah what we've gotten ourselves into and ryan ryan knew what we were getting into ryan's the mountain man you know he's been through all these high alpine passes part of the reason why it made a lot of sense ryan asked to come on this one and i was like yeah he knows his [ __ ] i kind of chuckled to myself when we started walking i wore like basically hiking shoes that also have a cleat in them because i just knew and i think everyone was looking at me like oh like what's the point of those like and they were walking within an hour and a half of the ride so to me that was that was kind of funny just and and you just change your mindset and you change your expectations and it's okay this is going to be different than what i thought it was going to be but it doesn't mean that it's bad it just means that it's different how you feeling oh my gosh okay i was cows are a little tight from the walk-in you know but uh yeah yeah this is this is real this is like the crown of the rockies i mean this pass just it's a little intimidating that this is the first one and category category on the jeep 4x4 scale is like intermediate kind of like one of the easier passes so we just got to see very quickly on you're realizing just how impossible this is every layer that you could make something difficult it's just a a seven layer burrito of what so we make it to the top of the very first pass and at this point if ryan and jeremiah go this same pace and i'm able to maintain this pace i feel pretty confident that we're going to be able to stay together for a while we come off the descent the descents are again just so amazing because this is unlike anything else we've done so far in this series in this project and this is what i really like i like long steady climbs for an hour or two followed by big descents you know put in a big effort put in a big recovery so on paper i was really excited about this profile and just doing big climbs big descent [Music] [Music] okay so we're like two hours in bro i have no idea how i'm gonna make it much further just energy can't talk we're so high up we're about ten thousand feet of elevation air is thin and you're having to go so hard just to keep the bike upright it's loose it's great oh i'm so out of my element here okay so now we hit red mountain which when i look back on it is really a blip on the radar it wasn't that technical it was probably the funnest pass for me personally it sort of feels like the last day of death valley yeah where i don't really care how this day goes because we've already accomplished something so amazing we're on the second pass yeah this is red mountain i think the side of red mountain the dirt on this side is like a little bit wet or tacky yeah it's good and so it's a lit it's way easier than that first pass so far yeah we're just at about two hours and 50 minutes in and energy's doing good but we got to keep remembered remembering to eat because it's uh one of those things that'll catch up with you quick you get too excited looking at the terrain and you know taking on the next section so you know it's a long day and this is only going to get harder yeah the red mountain it was it was actually a really nice road surface but it was steep and i was feeling really good there so i kind of just took took my own pace and was loving it honestly the sun was perfect it was starting to warm up um so to me that was just getting some fun climbing in and get into some good views you know still so early in the ride and i think with rides like this you have to go with a totally different mindset you can't be trying to hit the mileage it's more just saying okay i'm gonna be out riding my bike all day and as long as i keep moving that's the theme you keep moving and it's moving through mountains and it's whether you're walking or you're hiking or you are riding your bike it's different terrain out here it's not a race where you're trying to average a certain speed you have no idea and you have no idea what these passes are going to bring and i didn't either i mean i i knew what these passes in general were like but i hadn't done these passes so i was taking it past my past as well [Music] all right george in tyler's just down there a little ways ryan is obviously acclimated to this i'm not wow just unbelievable up here we've ascended about 1500 meters that's about much as much as the ventu some of the bigger climbs in the tour de france but man we're climbing on much tougher surfaces just got to keep it rolling keep fueling and be powered by the terrain be powered by the motivation this is uh one dedicated to aaron because she's done so much to me to enable these things to happen so i love you so we get to the top of this one it's not really that big of a deal like this sort of just a warm up to what the day is gonna be [Music] [Music] it's getting a little warm i'm feeling really spunky and i'm right with these two pro mountain bikers so i'm just thinking bro i'm a pro mountain biker now [Music] we come flying around this turn jeremiah almost loses his back wheel kicks out and he almost crashes i see that and i'm like wow he almost wrecked i better not do that and then promptly shredded my face into the ground god damn it and so we came around this tight turn and i just lost the front pretty going pretty fast and i crushed myself into the ground i'm sliding i'm like upside down and i'm just waiting for that moment where you realize i've broken something and so then i kind of lay there for a minute i can hear the drone over the top of me just looking down at me i'm not springing two which is a little bit of a concern because sometimes when you're fine you just jump right up yo you all right yeah yeah dude yeah it's so [ __ ] twitchy yeah it's just these marbles man super steep and all it takes is one of these apples to put you down there's like no traction like no traction feels like i'm on ice yeah i mean i almost lost it too you see me slide out yeah it's just super loose no injuries no it's probably good to have your knee warmers on i see a little blood yeah but now my foot is messed up my my hip is messed up my hands messed up my shoulder hurts a lot and i now i feel so stupid right and i don't want to feel this way i don't want to be that guy where there's these pro mountain bikers and they're riding and now they're climbing better than me and now i'm the one that's wrecking i don't want to be the squid on the ride and jeremiah has this like old father figure where he's not mad but he's like disappointed in you you know like when your parents are like i'm just really disappointed that's way worse than if they were mad and so i'm like ah man like i don't want to do this i don't want to be that guy so jeremiah like kind of slowly paces me back down the hill we get to the road and i'm really beat up at this moment like proper beat up but i'm not going to talk about it i'm not going to use that as an excuse we're just going to keep riding so then me and ryan hit this million dollar road i believe so good and on a mountain bike you drop the seat you know the suspension's unlocked and so you're just carving these turns and that was so much fun and so then i kind of forgot that i had crashed because we were having such a good time ryan was taking these really sharp turns like on the inside and i was right behind him so it was just vibes through the roof [Music] okay so i really hope the drone got my epic bro i was upside down just hearing rocks go over my head and just digging into my shoulder and it's just thinking like is this where i break my collarbone i'm kind of made out of rubber rolling wise just the taco bell parking lots that uh give me trouble oh jesus oh my god how you feeling jeremiah i'm feeling good you know we're different faces and you know par for the course this elevation magnifies any pace difference you might have so we gotta just anticipate that we kind of knew it coming into it yeah we'll ride together until we can't but uh yeah tyler went down that's not gonna really help his mojo he was already kind of a little hurting so yeah we just try to encourage each other keep each other in it and each person's ride's gonna be each person drive and that's uh part of the story of this one i think it's it's gonna kind of just become its own its own game okay so now we get to corkscrew path and jeremiah is off the back a little bit he was getting food or doing something and so i'm with ryan and i am wanting to stay with these guys i feel my mind wants to go hard but my body and the elevation it's like there's a rev limiter which is really strange i want to go hard i want to stay with ryan i want to show him that i'm you know not an idiot but it's just there's no possible way to recruit any more energy from my body and it's not even where i'm cracked or i'm out of calories the elevation is just flatlining everything and so ryan's riding away from me and no matter how bad i want to stay with him i literally just there's nothing i can do so now i start to feel like i'm drowning if like you have shackles on your feet and you're trying to keep your head above water but you just can't and it's inevitable that you're gonna sink and that's gonna be your day and so then jeremiah comes and he passes me and now i'm getting really frustrated getting really frustrated with my performance i'm getting really frustrated with how much longer we have to go and where i am in my personal space i was like wow you know starting to feel this you know you're riding on the nose the saddle i mean you're really far forward you know you're kind of feeling it in your quads a little different okay we're on the third pass i mean i can't i can't keep the bike up right i'm so frustrated i feel so stupid i hate being this [ __ ] guy this is truly impossible yeah we were kind of splitting up on pace you know kind of getting off on a separate pace but we're all kind of making a good effort to find a rhythm you know three four hours into this thing i mean you kind of know what you've got you kind of know where you are as far as physically as far as where your performance is i felt like i was riding pretty decent given the elevation we topped out or started to top out at corkscrew or so i thought and then you turn the corner and bang there's this reveal of like oh i'm only halfway and i think that was like the story of the day every single climb looks like you know a nice peak on paper but then when you're actually climbing and you get above tree line like you get up onto the shoulder of the mountain and then you see that big gray thing in the back like this monster with like a little zigzag etched in and you realize you are nowhere near the top okay four hours and 40 minutes in we have ascended 2200 meters that's like 8 500 feet that's what we just came up this is called the corkscrew for an obvious reason tyler's down there having a tough goal he's walking one section ryan's kind of gone up ahead i stopped to get tyler a bottle just to keep him moving but um yeah i think we're probably gonna split up at some point probably after this next flat section so hopefully we can regroup fuel up and uh hang together for a little while longer [Music] what is that dude [Music] this is comedic yeah jb whoa this corkscrew pass is insane so steep oh my gosh and corkscrew mountain the other two guys never really even mentioned much about this but it was so difficult you're you're it's these sharp switchbacks the dirt is so loose it's hard in every possible way like check every box that's hard because the elevation is ridiculous so you don't really have much power you can't really think that well it's so steep that you really need to stand but you can't because it's loose and then you have to go fast just to stay upright but now there's no elevation so it's like oh and then there's motorcycles are blasting by you so now you really have a context of how slow you're going yeah i mean the switchbacks and corkscrew were just uh phenomenal just pin after pin after pin and then you get above tree line and it's just like this staircase to heaven just such a cool climb but yeah when we're getting to the top of corkscrew i was like damn this is hard i mean quads are already like tightening up from the pushing and from sprinting to try to get over these steep sections it was definitely just like you know all the work you put in the reward is is 100 worth it the vistas up there i mean you could stand up there for two hours just looking i feel great thank you you look like you're crushing it this is all new to me new roads is motivation although i looked ahead at that one and it was it was just mind blowing up here like we just have to be okay walking as long as you're okay walking nothing is too steep we have to tell tyler that it's okay to walk yeah right now he's in the mental circle of i suck you know just because walking yeah but no it's evil it is really loose really difficult at some point we're gonna have to split up i think i think so i think that moment yeah but man when we got to the top it was like just free ride down the mountain through this alpine gulch i guess it's called velocity basin and it's just green with these lakes and just uh you know i can see why people think that this is like the alps of colorado like there's no doubt about it very jagged peaks but this you know awesome green basins we're just ripping i'd linked up with ryan and you know we're just carving and turning and weaving and it's actually kind of fun riding these atv trails because they got these banks and then they'll have these sudden drops and i remember coming up to one drop and there's this giant hole i grabbed a fist full of break dipped down in the hole popped out of it caught some air just like you know really fun i mean it's old school mountain biking or maybe it's new school gravel riding i'm not sure but it's fun so whatever so it's like everything i have just to make corkscrew pass i mean i emptied the tank and emotionally i'm i'm now drained physically i'm pretty exhausted and we are not even halfway through the day so then we get to the top of corkscrew pass and uh ryan and jeremiah had gone ahead and i'm sort of just in this mental funk of you know feeling really dumb and also then i'm thinking about i would say i'm a filmmaker that likes to ride bikes i'm not a bike rider that makes films and so in my head the film comes first that's what i'm thinking about all the time so maybe i shouldn't think that way you know the the videographers we had for this project were next level so i really probably shouldn't have even thought about it but that was like just ticking through my mind there's no way this is going to convey in the video i mean just pedaling your bike is this elevation just murders you i mean this is absolutely living up to what i thought it was going gonna be which is the hardest one day ride ever all right rolling into the town of silverton oh cool pretty wild it's like this uh i guess silver mining town i've only heard of it in legend from the iron horse classic but we also are at that crossroads tyler is struggling and it's just climb after climb so i think we're going to start going our own pace from this point and just see how far we make it individually we just have to keep rolling um if we're going to have any chance of making it so we come off this corkscrew pass descent and it is so unbelievably beautiful and there's this moment where i'm and it's like really nice road you're i mean you're cooking i think my maximum speed on strava was like 55 miles an hour which is probably at this point so i'm just the vibes start coming back and i kind of got into this place where i remember this quote that says comparison is the thief of joy i like that quote but i never really understood it but in this moment i was comparing myself to two pro mountain bikers and it was robbing the joy of this trip so i reframed my thoughts in this moment that i'm no longer gonna compare myself to two badasses i'm just to do what i do and maybe that's kind of embarrassing it's embarrassing for me to put that out there it's embarrassing for me to put in context to what real mountain bikers do versus me but it didn't matter i changed the way i thought in that moment coming off of corkscrew pass and i i just started having fun i started loving life well we're six hours in and i mean this succession of super steep passes like it's easier to walk a lot of sections of this i think we're going to roll and uh after this next climb roll our own pace and [Music] see how it rolls how you feeling i feel good it's looking good just pace it out this has been super fun that court true is one of the steeper ones i've ever done we're 45 miles in yeah okay with 80 600 feet of climbing so we're about 35-40 percent don't give me percentages like that [Applause] start riding towards the next big pass and with the elevation it literally feels like your brakes are on you're pedaling and the way you are perceiving your energy being exerted versus how fast you're going doesn't match up it just feels like you have a kite behind you it just is so frustrating and so then ryan's like pushing the pace and i am going pretty hard just to stay with them but it's like flat and rolling so i kind of want to stay with them as long as possible and then again i just checked out and i said you know what i we have so much further to go i need to just settle in my own pace and enjoy this amazing opportunity i have so i'd never really ridden with tyler much i knew that he has the ability to hang in the front of groups and some of these massive races and i've been there with him a few times i didn't know how he would do in these mountains and at altitude i knew he wasn't from high altitude so i was just hoping that he would put his best effort in and just you know have the day that he wanted to have out there um and just that he would just enjoy these things that i absolutely love these views these passes and just the whole experience we've just started the base of cinnamon pass tyler's probably a couple of minutes down already so i think we're going on a run at this point um kind of just follow our pace i don't know if i'm gonna be following this guy's pace much longer he's charging he is acclimated this is his house it's definitely apparent that ryan and i needed to kind of find our pace we linked up with tyler for a little bit but uh if we had any chance of making it back to telluride we had to definitely boogie [Music] it dots all of these passes just gradually send you into shitsville i mean it just slowly leads you in we hit cinnamon pass and so it's not that bad but it's just every every half mile it gets worse and worse and worse worse in more technical steeper looser higher and i don't know at what point in this this movie that i have uh explained the elevation but we are minimum 8 000 maximum 13 8. i think we're around 12 000 feet in the air i mean it's so freaking outstandingly beautiful but i am those are the noises that i guess all i can make i only have this climb and what three to go after that two so flat section two big mandatory climbs to tell your ride so we're getting there so we kind of wrote our own pace up cinnamon pass you know i was feeling good and kind of uh finding my rhythm finding my drive feeling like the altitude was like i don't know like i was almost acclimating during the ride which is really strange feeling to actually start feeling better during the ride but you know i started to get into a groove just another phenomenal high alpine pass hard to explain it hard to explain it [Music] on cinnamon pass having my first little bunk to stay at a bar jeremiah's just grinding up the hills body feels good i just kind of like got dizzy for a second there but when that happens you just gotta like soft pedal for a second get some food in and just say all right i can turn this around but pushing through that definitely not what you want to do all of a sudden you'll be laying on the side of the road well trying to get the shot there but cinnamon passes you know like a lot of the other passes it gets phony above tree line super cool though and man the cascades blue water something up here but it's getting tired yeah so we were climbing up cinnamon pass you know going by this awesome stream old mining stuff but it's fairly manageable grade but then you turn right and then climb up into the bosom of the pass and the scale of the mountains is difficult to describe i mean you're looking for two miles in that direction and seeing this giant peak over there and nothing between you and it and then you look to the right another two miles and another behemoth peak but you're just in this basin with no signs of humanity and it's like it's like being inside of like a a snow globe you know those things you get you know like uh the holiday snow globes and you're inside of this different world it's it's like you're just in this magical world of like high definition crisp massive peaks with zero sign of humanity that's something really just wild about the alpine zone [Music] so many miles in are you guys right now 59.4 yeah just under 60. unbelievable 11 864. [Applause] yeah you good i'm good [Music] [Applause] so we are almost to lake city 77 miles in not gonna lie this is kind of the part of the ride where you're about halfway through you're a little tired and you start to wonder why you're out here but what we have going for us is lots of snacks and good scenery honestly i love steep climbing because it feels like such more primitive activity where you're just physically trying to like keep moving forward and the effort is dictated by the terrain so i actually did not enjoy the flat flattish downhill because one my body was starting to get a little tired but two i feel like i had to mentally put the effort in to keep going and for every mile we got further away i knew that we were going the wrong way from telluride i mean it was nice to have some chill miles to just kind of like relax the mind but i i like the high climbing i like you know being up there so i didn't i didn't i didn't really want to go any further down i am just in a world of hurt from the elevation i just can't you just like i said you're drowning you just there's nothing you can do so i'm slugging up this climb one of our film crew guys ben he's on the moto and he's with me and without him i am for sure turning around and just cutting this course in half but ben was like always there to cheer me on he he would always be getting these sick shots and dude i will run myself into the ground in a blaze of fire for the right shot so as long as it's on film i am totally okay suffering till death such a heartbreaker right there you got this and he just encouraged me to get to the very top and if we just said that was the end that's the ride that in loan like a lifetime ride for most people just getting that point i get to the top there's all these jeepers and they're cheering for some reason uh for me which was really invigorating was awesome um because the just driving up these is difficult and so to see someone doing this under their own power not on an e-bike i don't know how the other guy saw it but the love i got from the jeepers from the side by sides from the motos was so heartwarming and really motivated if anyone ever says hey you want to go mountain bike in colorado a little tired eight hours in but the scenery seems to make it move you know it's funny because like i was into such a climbing mode you get down to the lake you know lake city's got this beautiful neon blue-green lake and you're just cruising along it's kind of hot down there and that was actually what most people would probably find the most enjoyable part but i really wanted to be back up in the mountains like up on like the steep side you know switchbacks climbing up and being in the alpine zone it was a big contrast and you know there ryan and i stopped at the store and walked in this funky little store like they had like cigarettes like vitamin water i mean it's the weirdest store ever but yeah that was a real contrast you know we needed to break that point it was really starting to wear on us all this climbing and all this like torquey torquey bit have you ever been up engineer pass not on bicycle or foot but uh on the ohp how is it hard long i mean to me it wasn't hard long yes it took us about six hours we are on the far side of the route lake city so we're way over halfway the mileage yeah we still have almost 10 000 people climbing to go 10 000 feet of climbing in two hills where our stats oh 6 30 behind let's roll i put a pacer on there six minutes nine hours in ah what's two climbs okay we're uh at the top of cinnamon what's going i mean the elevation is such a an ordeal that there's not much going on in my head i'm just like a blank slate which is actually a very like spiritual and and esoteric experience monks will go their whole life trying to get their mind to be silent and during these impossible routes almost everyone there's that moment where you're just a floating ball of consciousness throw rolling through the world [Music] top of cinnamon pass we start going down it's it's pretty technical at a certain point we kind of go through this switchback was amazing and then opens up to this view that's just like this can't be real like if if the matrix exists this is programmed like that's what i was like almost thinking i like if i was going to make something in a video game this would be it it was unbelievable [Music] how is this real life how is this real life this is insane i've never seen anything like this in my life it's just spectacular and so i actually stopped and i started taking some pictures and then i kind of started messing with my suspension and what i found was that both front and rear were set to the bunny right so it was just like super fast rebound uh so anytime my front end would lose traction the suspension would shoot out and uh and so then i actually adjusted it turned it to the turtle and that completely changed the the characteristics of the bike and made it wildly better which obviously you're gonna be like well dude why didn't you have it set up before this i didn't know i was going to ride this bike to like three days before and it was in pieces it is what it is the show must go on so i fixed the suspension and now the vibe for me personally is just an all-time high [Music] and so again at this point i guess i could be in a tt position trying to catch ryan and jeremiah ben kept telling me they weren't that far up the road which made me want to chase but i was having a time in my life [Music] man engineer pass goes forever i feel like i've already been climbing for two hours and i'm only at 10 500 feet getting sick of my bike seat pretty wild places up here looks like some kind of store wow i guess you can go down to that mine shaft no thanks [Applause] 10 hours in top of engineer pass i am definitely hurting a bit but also pace is good pace is good engineer pass is what really kind of started to take it out of me uh i found my own rhythm i let jeremiah go and i found my headphones and i put in a podcast just trying to mindless get through some miles that's the point in the day where you're about 60 of the way through and you've got so much to go but you also are very tired uh so that's the hardest part of the day an engineer pass for me was just not very enjoyable engineer pass sucks i'm over it it's not even steep right here but i'm just so sick of pedaling right now feels really nice to just walk my feet were starting to hurt 12 100 feet i'm just like okay i'm like doing fine on energy just like sick of being on my bike so in the death valley project i said this but it never made it in the video which is that there's this movie called contact they make contact with aliens and they go to this other galaxy and when she first sees this other galaxy she says they should have sent a poet and not a scientist and that's what i feel like is that i don't have the vocabulary to describe what this place looks like and how it feels all i can say is it's awesome it's beautiful it's amazing but those words don't capture what this is and maybe we need to bring a poet along for one of these impossible routes because there's no way i can verbally pass on the feeling to you of what it's like out here and so we turn onto engineer pass and it's like just this crazy gradual climb you're going through this canyon it's amazing and now that i'm all by myself i start to crack i'm out of calories i'm out of water very shortly on into this climb i'm by myself and i just pull over and i lay on the ground and i'm having that moment of there's really probably no way i'm gonna be able to finish this pass and so i'm just laying there trying to think of how i can quit how do i get out of this situation so because this road is so difficult travis with the van had to be in like a town super far away so my last like feed was four hours ago and i have to climb the hardest gnarliest pass before i can even get to him so i'm like two hours away from him i just don't see how that's possible when i turned that corner up there and on that switchback and i saw my the first bicycle i said i got to get a picture of this yeah i don't know how they're going to do six of them they're really doing six passes today wow i don't know how they're going to do it i really don't know i guess that's why it's called the impossible right i have no idea how they're gonna do it i couldn't probably do it on a motorcycle i thought it was gonna be an hour and a half but after the false flat sections you're going past these mines it finally kicks up and it kicks up big massive oxbow switchbacks loose rocks it's just uh never-ending and as soon as you think you've topped out you're just coming up the shoulder of the mountain and then you see the head and then you're like oh damn the top of this is so steep and way longer than i thought looks like it's only about a mile and a half left grossly underestimated this pass grossly how y'all doing good how are you doing okay oh man good to see some other riders out here i hope that's the top i've been saying that for like uh an hour i was thinking about ben and uh so ben sontag um that he has the kom on that climb i was wondering why he wanted me to come out here and ride this stuff and i get it now it is really magical it's a real special place and really one that's like you know each one of these passes would be a day ride for a lot of people like i think you know to do engineer pass and descend down the other side you could be like damn that was a really good ride two passes okay that's a epic ride if you wanted to do cinnamon pass engineer pass descend back down to silverton that is a big big ride but trying to do seven big passes in one day that was that was very very ambitious and that's why we got kicked in the teeth i made it i made it oh one left one more pass left holy [ __ ] it is some gothic terrain up here that was an effort okay i honestly thought that was the top back there but i guess par for the course it wouldn't be an impossible ride if the top was actually the top man nearly 13 000 feet here and no doubt this gravel route is the crown of the rockies this is really something on real i feel like i'm on a different planet i looked it took me 2 hours and 20 minutes to climb it i mean where do you get a 2 hour and 20 minute long steady climb so that is where i was really starting to get into my head and that pass just dragged on absolutely forever and of course on the other side was a more technical of a descent than i could have ever imagined the most bone jarring descents i've ever done engineered descent was the most technical of all the passes by far but descending took like 40 minutes you got these huge rock slabs at the bottom you know big big holes and chunks and debris everywhere like some places you can't even like really decide a line because it's just like slab hole slab hole i had to shake my hands out my ankles hurting feet hurting but yeah we were you know kind of expecting a beat down but i was not expecting something that technical on this descent so it was really really something ah engineer passed descent so bumpy so steep my wrists barely even work oh look how sweet this is oh my goodness wow whoa don't fall off there the descent off of engineer was just like so involved it was constant picking of lines i mean i went off i felt like like a four foot drop at one point and i was so it's just like it's it's so rocky and don't flat don't smash my rim don't break a wheel like and then all of a sudden you end up on this million dollar highway again and this song in my head is the one from shrek where it's like and it's like the perfect light and i just um i like put my dropper down and i said i'm not pedaling for like ever and i just stood there like shaking my wrists out wow this place has no lack of spectacular about 12 and a half hours in elapsed time and yeah really pleased now i'm feeling this role in my own pace at this point that junior pass is messed up there she is and that was one of the coolest parts about this whole ride was seeing these towns i've never seen i've heard so many things about silverstone i've heard so many things about you know lake city and then your a i was blown away i mean the peaks and just the the lighting was perfect i wanted to stop and just hang out to like explore a little bit but as we got into your a i was looking at my watch and definitely realized i had to keep moving if i wanted to even get to tie rod at all so now we start really coming up engineer pass and it gets really steep and the elevation has me just twisted so there's no negotiating with elevation elevation don't care i really feel like i have a strong mindset but it is literally useless in this moment like i want to go hard i want to finish i i can overcome the demons it's just like with elevation i just have no power and you you need power to climb this thing and this is what i love about these situations is that you will the primal instinct inside of you is survival and so you're always going to have these doubts that's that's totally normal but if you put yourself in a position where quitting is not an option you don't it's not possible all of a sudden your body does something that you never thought possible which is like opens up these reserves and you go so far beyond what you think is is possible and is capable [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] i might might be able to finish this pass but then technically there's two more passes and so for me not a chance it's not a no way am i going to do that so i just need to focus on this can i can i make this one pass it's difficult it's very difficult it's the most difficult thing ever at one point i'm pushing the handlebars with my head because i'm just trying to do anything like my head hasn't been used during this trip so i'm using that to push my bike i said it hooray hopefully heading to imaging pass but also maybe it'd be better if we weren't because we got to go 4 000 feet up in the next like six miles i want it to be so steep that i get to hike i really do because my legs are sick of pedaling how was that last uh descent off engineer ha that pass is insane super pretty but you're not taking some prius up that thing oh my gosh well shazam i thought i was just bonking really hard but no it's real this is like uh pretty special really special place coming down engineer pass you get to a slot canyon you can see the sun was dipping below the mountains and i mean like i'm doing like the boy scout thing where i'm like okay oh that's only two hours it's just no way no way would we descend down and then be able to hit black bear pass i mean that was a fool's errand so climbing out of horray we're not even at 9000 feet and i just realized the last pass imaging pass is 13 100 feet which means over 4 000 feet straight up in the sky after 12 hours of riding this is a complete kick in the nuts so the goal was to get to telluride before 8 21 which is official like sundown based on how quick i'm going and how steep this is it's going to be hard i just want to get to telluride i've got a headlamp this pass is a monster i think the worst is yet to come i knew that it was going to take a big effort to even get over uh imogene pass in even before dark and coming out of your a i remember thinking that we were like 8 700 feet and i remember going hey siri what's the elevation of imogene pass and she goes imogen passed at 13 000 and i was just like what the all right now i'm really hurting halfway up this 1200 meter final climb they gotta just stick it out got it i think i'm gonna make it before dark holy [ __ ] what a day [Applause] so i lay down at one point i'm probably an hour from the top dude that's forever i'm laying down and i'm just looking at this wheat blow in the wind and it's like all i can see is a blue sky picture perfect blue sky with wheat and there's like a little fly buzzing around and i just i just get into this very hippie moment where i start realizing like this is something that monks spend their whole life to achieve which is an empty mind you are void of memories of emotions of of stresses it's literally just my pure consciousness flowing through the world and living in the absolute moment of the environment i i just kind of got this little shitty grin on my face i kind of smiled a little bit inside i just felt very special that i was i've been able to accomplish this and it was a very spiritual experience so then i kind of just put my sunglasses on i put my big boy panties on and i just keep going [Music] [Music] i don't know how we did it i i literally don't understand how we did it but we did it i mean we didn't finish the ride there's still there's still like 10 000 feet of climbing left in the route i'm not gonna make it i'm barely going to make it over this but we made it over this so that's a small victory in itself so a couple jeeps just passed me and said they our film guys were looking for jeremiah and he wasn't up ahead so i'm a little bit concerned but it is getting dark unfortunately he has a tracker let's see hopefully it turns out so you're solo you're in the vibe at what point do you realize that you are have taken a wrong turn oh man i'm like in that groove where the pedals are just turning i feel like i can ride all day like i felt like i was racing 100 mile race that was the pace i was going like i was pushing pushing pushing i'm looking at the profile i'm a quarter of the way up already and then i hear this like i look down on my garment it says make a u-turn i'm like no no no and i ignored it and then i had that sinking feeling when i checked the map i'm like oh no i am going the wrong way uphill on like a 18 grade climb for like 15 minutes and i realized i am not even on the right mountain i'm like like i'm supposed to be over there 1 000 feet up the wrong direction well might not make my dark oh brian went this way all right i'm in chase mode i think ryan's probably about five minutes ahead of me my math is correct see if i can catch him doesn't realize i'm behind him hey i went the wrong way up that hill like a thousand feet it was terrible we wanted to climb we found jeremiah he went the wrong way bonus climbing though now he's in the lead so there are these reveals like they'll be climbing for like an hour and a half and then you hit treeline and you look up and you're like oh [ __ ] where's the house yeah way way way up there the top of that i figured we got another hour of punishment 45 minutes at least right over that hill tell your ride i can't even walk wow man we turned this corner thought we were mostly done and we still got like a thousand more feet to climb we get up to like what i think is a thousand feet of climbing left but it's so crystal clear you look up and you just see this giant gray wall and then i saw the line this hair this little hair type line across and that was the top of the pass and that's when i realized no way we're gonna make it over the top before dark ryan and jeremiah had their their day this is the top of my day so i am in my head i'm done i've made it it's still sun i mean the sun is is going down but i have accomplished what i thought would be impossible which is to make it to the top of this this pass before sunset now if you've ever ridden a bike and you look at your profile you if you look the up is hard and then the down you're like cool well this is a huge downhill i'm going to get to just rip home it's not how this pass was laid out it was so technical so difficult and it's not a matter of you know just unless go the brakes and sit on the seat and and go you are like proper mountain biking like i'm really trying to think about my form like my elbows up like my back straight my toes in like i'm really trying to not die and so i'm i'm tip toeing down this descent for what it feels like about 30 minutes and then i i stop and i'm kind of shaking up my hands and i look at the profile and i'm halfway down the descent and i'm like come on no way wow we just turned the corner to that see that traverse up there after this incredible wall we're facing we've got traverse all the way up to there just unbelievable unbelievable i've never seen anything like it i'm like man all right we're just gonna have to hit the pause button see where we are at 8 21. and uh yeah man it's about 22 000 feet of climbing so by far the most climbing i've ever done in one day but yeah we were just shy of the top i just have to keep pushing we're almost to the traverse i think that's ridable how you feeling really got him up here it's just relentless i mean i knew this up it was 13-1 i'm pretty sure it's the highest pass in colorado it's awesome the summit the highest pass on the hardest 4x4 dirt road gravel ride in colorado if not america it's not the world i don't know how it stacks up but i just know how i feel right now and it is not good and i think once we got to the top like we were really excited because even if we were descending the sketchy ass 5000 foot downhill in the dark we know we were gonna get there and so now i'm descending one of the most technical descents i've ever done and then i'm thinking oh i'm gonna die so then i'm trying not to flat because like how dumb is that to flat like right at the end i see this perfectly paved road and i'm just like i swear as soon as i hit the road my back tire just goes and i saw i i'm like no dude like it's gone through so much and i have not flatted at all during these impossible like not one flat through the last three episodes and i guess technically you might say i still haven't flatted because that was sort of the end of my ride but anyways i don't get to do this big descent on the road it doesn't matter because it's pitch black and so now i have a flat and ben's still way up the mountain and i'm just like what do i do now and then this guy um who i think was definitely drinking a lot of whiskey because he offered me some whiskey he's like do you need a ride back into town like i do he's like well i have no room in my cab so you got to get in the bed but there was like all of this construction equipment like ladders saws hammers my brother's no space in your bed either and so he's like oh you'll be fine so we put the bike in the bed and i'm sitting in between this like a ladder and a like a jigsaw and dude uh i was any other context this would be a really bad experience that you're probably with a drunk driver and you're in the bed of his truck uh in a ladder but bro i was just as happy as could be i i'm just getting this free ride down this mountain it's kind of warm it's over for me i've made it out of this alive it was just i don't know man i was so happy in that moment and that's what i love about these projects it takes what might objectively be a dangerous sketchy situation that you wouldn't be happy with and turn it into a positive the whole experience man was just freaking life-changing [Music] there was no there's no decision because you either go back down the hill into your a or you just keep going to telluride and that was the easier decision so we just kind of said all right that is that is where we got now let's drive this thing home [Music] [Music] so we just wrapped up the craziest ride ever it's gonna take a little while to unpack this one i i don't know what do you say it's how would you describe this uh lots and lots of steep hard climbing but super rewarding views so yeah unreal way harder than i thought every pass i over underestimated i need to find some place to lay down oh it feels so good to be horizontal even on a hard park bench oh i don't think anybody should go do that ride that was really awesome but in kind of like a just ridiculously brutal way it's going to be tough to to really unwind and explain it all but in the meantime i think we should go get some pizza pizza well done [Laughter] yeah i think the whole day i was very motivated by just being out doing what i love and especially after my injuries like every mile that would take by and my it band was okay and my back was okay i was just like there are so many moments where i would have died to be able to be out here so that was awesome um i think early on just going easy where i could and just having that mental space like all right i'm gonna be out here all day and just keep moving and do the best you can that to me just help to kind of calm everything down and preserve that mental energy and when it gets hard you say like okay like just keep moving and instead of it being oh i can't ride this or oh my back wheel or oh i'm so tired from hiking it's like just keep moving all day and see where you land you know we were climbing engineer pass i mean they even thought this on cinnamon path but engineer pass is like another level of difficulty like just so hard you can't breathe there's dust coming off of the atvs and i'm just thinking if ryan and i or professional mountain bikers you know ace high altitude riders are struggling right now like just really really struggling you know what's happening to tyler right now i know i was worried he wasn't going to make it over the past and i i heard from the guys the camera crew that that he was going to try to make it over the past and then down into oh ray but having seen that descent i'm thinking he's going to hit that descent in the dark you know it could crash off of an embankment and never see him again like you know i was just genuinely worried um you know maybe we got a little too deep on this one so for me personally i made it five of the seven passes if jeremiah and ryan had completed the next two i'd have felt like a real pos but they didn't uh they did not make that last climb i don't think it's possible to do that without you know i mean maybe but there ryan and jeremiah are so this is perfect for them and for them to only make it one more pass than me even though each pass is huge uh made me feel really good about my effort um you know that i got that far and that on my best day all the training everything goes the right you know perfect i'm only making it one more pass so this was truly an impossible route we have set out to make impossible routes three times four times we count hawaii and each time we succeed this one i feel good that it was impossible that we weren't able to complete it the irony is that this over ambitious route that we built like i mean it's like if you went out to run a marathon and you only made it like 18 miles like that's literally what happened yesterday but the feeling is completely different it's a feeling of great accomplishment it might have been my best day of the year i'm not kidding like i was riding at 12 000 feet firing firing firing legs were good hydrating focused you know we had good camaraderie uh you know we had moments and and times where it came down and came up and came down and came up but even though you know we only made it telluride we didn't add the additional climb i am i'm really stoked with how how my day went uh just um you know i think it's not about finishing i think that's what's unique about this particular impossible route we knew it's going to be how much can we do how much can i do how much can you do and i think when people you know come up and just talk to me about their experience you know it's it's about going and doing and going and trying and it's really the challenge that puts us out there in these mountains and i tell you what i go right back and try again [Music] so [Music] out there riding in the most beautiful place in the world for impossible routes to tell you ride just maybe think of my good friend ben sontag this is one of his favorite places in the world to ride i'd like to dedicate this impossible ride to you ben sure i'm echoing a lot of people's sentiment when they say ben was just a warm loving character just a pure positive glowing human being and the world is not the same place without him because i know that his inspiration lives on in the people that he reached and the people that he touched and it reminded me of a quote from jimi hendrix when the power of love overcomes the love of power the world will know peace one of my favorite quotes of all time made me think of ben and his spirit his positive energy and his love is still here you

Channel: VC Adventures

Views: 376,110

Keywords: vegan cyclist, vegan cycling, health and fitness, bicycle riding, road bikes, cycling, bike racing, cycling tips, the vegan cyclist, go pro cycling, cycling go pro, bike hacks, cycling racing, tips for cycling, vegan athlete, cycling videos, cycling workouts, sufferfest cycling

Id: 0_MEf3DSGIY

Length: 91min 54sec (5514 seconds)

Published: Wed Dec 15 2021