Storm Peak Challenge Hill Climb - Steamboat, CO

This past Wednesday I entered the Storm Peak Challenge Hill Climb Mtb race in Steamboat, Colorado. This event is part of the Steamboat Town Challenge Mountain Bike race series. Sam mentioned this race on Tuesday (as we were driving out to Colorado) and I thought that it sounded like a good chance to get out on the local trails and loosen up my legs from the long drive.

This is basically a mountain bike hill climb on the Steamboat ski slope mountain. I entered the Masters 50+ Sport race which was advertised as a 5.6 mile climb up to Storm Peak.

We rolled into Steamboat at about noon which gave me a bit of time to have a local bike shop (Orange Peel !) take a look at my rear brake (which was in serious need of a bleed job). As I noticed my shortness of breath after climbing the hotel stairs, I was starting to wonder about the wisdom of entering this race since I had no time to acclimate to the thin air at this higher elevation (Steamboat is at about 6,500 feet, while the race started at about 7,000 ft elevation and ended at over 9,000 feet). Also, the temperature at race time was almost 95F with bright sunshine and 5% humidity (!).

As expected, with the steep climb and thin (dry) air I had a hard time catching my breath on the first part of this race. However, I was able to settle into a steady groove after the first few miles and finished up on the mountain with no problems.

While I didn't encounter any of these (in person), I did see plenty of scat signs on on the trails to the top.

My next task was to get back to the lodge area at the base of the mountain. Somehow, I was imagining a nice paved road with great scenic views that I could easily glide down. In reality, the way home was more of a downhill mountain bike course filled with high speed banked turns. Thankfully, my brakes performed well and I enjoyed the bombing ride back to the bottom.

I ended up in 5th place in the Masters 50+ sports category with a time of 1:16:19 for the 6.4 mile climb.

After race festivities included a free Fat Tire Pale Ale at the Slopeside Grill and random awards via raffle.

One of the most interesting things about this series was the high number of kids that were racing (on shorter courses). In fact, the largest number of racers were in the "Coed 7-8 year old" class with 14 spirited competitors ...... very cool !

A challenging race with good organization and course marshalling as well as friendly competitors. Highly recommended !