“The last 36 hours have been pretty intense.”
Welcome to the understatement of the month.
Joe Grant woke up in Frisco Thursday morning, got on his bike, pedaled up Argentine Pass, climbed the adjacent fourteeners Grays Peak and Torreys Peak and returned to Georgetown that afternoon. After a bit of food he got on his bike and started pedaling. Down to Idaho Springs. Up to Central City. Over to Nederland.
He arrived at the trailhead of Longs Peak at 3 a.m. Friday. He was thinking he’d sleep for a bit. But some eager hikers were beginning their trek up the Rocky Mountain National Park fourteener.
“They were all happy and like ‘Good morning. Are you heading up the peak?’ And I said ‘I guess I am,’ ” Grant said.
He arrived at the top of Longs around sunrise. There were a few inches of snow on the ground. The sun was glowing beneath a thick layer of clouds.
“Super spectacular,” he said.
Back down and back on the bike. Around 1:30 p.m. Friday he arrived at his home up in Gold Hill. It had been close to 36 hours since he slept and 32 days and 8½ hours since embarked on Tour de 14er, a self-propelled, self-supported mission to ride his bike to and then climb 57 of the state’s highest points.
His time was the fastest ever for a self-supported, all human-powered loop of the state’s fourteeners. But Grant didn’t grind nearly 1,500 miles and scramblie up 57 peaks for a spot in a record book. Any record, he said, is “irrelevant.”
“That’s like going to college for a piece of paper,” he said, a half hour after arriving back home Friday and admitting to a touch of fatigue-induced delirium. “You really should go for an education. I felt that way this trip. The experience is so much more interesting and valuable than a number on a spreadsheet at the end.”