Today we rode from Steamboat Springs, Colorado, US to Radium, Colorado, US. Sunny weather with clouds, and thunderstorms. Road conditions included gravel roads for most of the day (few kilometer of paved roads). Highlights of the day include seeing some of the rock formations.

Riding statistics: on Friday, August 26, 2022, day 26 on the route, it took 11:02h (07:32h moving time), between 07:18 and 18:20, to cover 101 km (63 miles), including 1539 m (5049 ft) elevation gain, with an average speed of 13 km/h (8 mph), while reaching a maximum speed of 43 km/h (27 mph). During this ride the average temperature was 19 °C (66 °F) with a minimum of 8 °C (46 °F) and a maximum of 32 °C (90 °F).

Totals: So far, it took 7 days, 17 hours, 42 minutes, and 24 seconds of cycling time to cover 2731 km (1697 miles), including 31592 m (103653 ft) elevation gain, with an average speed of 14.9 km/h (9.3 mph).

For this morning, our alarm clocks were set at 6am again. Thanks to the guys from the Orange Peel bike shop we can start today as any other day. We quickly got ourselves and bikes ready and left the KOA campground.

We cycled through main street, which was really a great ride with all the different stores and outdoor scenery. The town is big on skiing in winter and other outdoor sports in summer. We saw the ski areas (including ski jumping) when cycling through town. Before we left town we first stopped at the local Safeway for some groceries. We needed food and water for at least two days since our planned stop for today, Radium, only has a convenience store according to our map information. It was again a little challenge to get all we bought on our bikes. Of course, we succeeded, and left town.

While cycling out of town we saw Tiago again. He had his own little adventure in and around Steamboat Springs and he was for a while joined by a nice guy who let him sleep in his house for the night. Tiago would join us for the rest of the day.

From today’s elevation profile it looked like a very long but gradual uphill to the top of Lynx Pass. Of course, it wasn’t like that. The whole ride to the top of Lynx Pass has been a continuous uphill & downhill. The scenery was beautiful, but the weather gradually changed from sunshine to developing thunderstorms. Around 1:30pm we finished climbing a slightly bigger hill and decided that it was time for lunch. Thunderstorms were around us and during lunch it started to rain. Not much later the rain became worse, and we decided to finish lunch, get our rain gear, and move on. By now the rain started to pour down on us, and after a couple of minutes cycling, we decided to seek shelter below some trees. For a few minutes, the trees provide some cover against the rain. After that, we still got wet. I quickly got the ground sheet of my tent which we could hold above our heads. At least it helped us from getting more wet. After about 20 minutes the rain had almost stopped, and we decided to move on. After cycling about 400 meters , we saw something that looked like a small cabin. When we got closer, it turned out to be a small cabin with a little porch and two restrooms. If we only would have known. After using the restrooms, we continued our ride again.

We still had to cycle quite a distance before reaching our destination for today, Radium. Although there was heavy cloud coverage, we did not get any rain anymore. After a while of cycling, we had to cross a stream. The stream was about 5m (15 ft) wide, and at its deepest point we guessed it would be around 30cm (1 ft). I just decided to cycle it. It went fine, only my shoes got a bit wet, but since I still had my shoe covers on, there was no issue at all. My bike was also much cleaner now, much of the mud from the rain has been washed away. Anna also decided to cycle it, she almost made it. No issues, just the shoes a little more wet. Tiago did not want to ride it because he thought it would be bad for his bike. He decided to go barefoot and told us to continue. After about half an hour he had caught up with us.

There were still some serious short but steep hills to climb before we would arrive in Radium. The rocky scenery we cycled through was amazing. Mainly red rocks combined with pine trees. There were also many rocks in other colors because of natural resources in them, such as red, green, blue, grey, and yellow. After a long, easy, and beautiful, downhill, we arrived at Radium.

Radium turned out to be a very small place as well. Only a couple of buildings and a campground. We were looking for a convenience store but could not find one. After asking around we ran into an older men that had a kind of snack (chocolate, chips, soda, and water) shop in the building he used for water rafting activities. We especially needed some water because we could not filter water in this area (Radium got its name for a reason).

After getting our snacks and water, we cycled to the campground. We already saw there were a lot of people, and we were wondering if there would still be a campsite available. It did not take long before we got confirmation, completely full, there was a canoe event. We either had to cycle on (with no place to camp for a while), or either ask around if we could share a campsite with others. We decided to test our luck and asked around. Fortunately, three kind guys allowed us to join them on their large campsite.

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