Bike Trip in Steamboat Springs

Steamboat Springs, Colorado

This morning found us renting e-Bikes for a back-country road trip. At home, Julie rides her bike every day. Me, I get saddle sores just thinking about riding a bike. Regardless (or irregardless for some of my friends), we rented a pair of e-Bikes and headed out, map in hand.

These bikes we very nice, Trek Rail-5 e-Bikes. They handle paved roads and paths fine and are very stable on ‘gravel‘ roads. That was good, because our route was 28 miles across paved and gravel roads. However, I was more interested in the power assist from the bikes because we were climbing over a series of ridges with elevation changes of over 2300’.

The bike has four power-assist settings. ECO, Tour, EMTB, and Turbo. ECO gives a little boost, but Tour is the setting for flat to moderate hills. EMTB stands for (a guess) E-Mountain Bike. Those pesky little hills won’t stand a chance at this setting! Then there is Turbo. The guy at the bike rental shop told us, “You won’t need Turbo mode, but you can try it out if you like.”

Heading Out

The Trek is a big heavy bike compared to what we’ve ridden in the past. We walked the bikes across the street and then started off riding the bike. Within a ¼ mile we were both comfortable on the bikes and turned onto Twentymile Rd. There were some inclines, but the bike handled them with no issue. Until mile 6.

The road slowly became steeper, and then precipitous. We switched from Tour to EMTB and benefitted from the power assist. Even with the bike helping us, it was a long three-mile climb. This is about the point where I started asking Julie, “Tell me again, why did you want to do this?” Well, we took a well-deserved rest at the top of this hill after climbing ~600ft.

The First Real Hill

Leaving our first rest stop, we began a fantastic 1-mile descent. Whoa! We were flying down the slope at over 35 mph. On a bike, that’s a rush! But then it was back to climbing another hill. This next climb was four miles long. Argh! It was here that we discovered the power of TURBO!

By now we were on a dirt road; the map claimed it was a ‘gravel road’. Between the road surface and the grade becoming pretty sharp, Julie and I were both struggling. Even with the power assist set at EMTB, it was rough going. With my longer legs, I was able to make pretty good progress, but Julie started falling back. “You go on ahead”, Julie breathlessly told me with just a little self-pity in her voice. So I knuckled down and pushed ahead.

The climb continued to torture me. I looked back several times and Julie was still there, but falling further behind. I focused and pushed on. Unexpectedly, I heard bike tires behind me. Suddenly, Julie was beside me…, passing me! (What the heck?!?) With a big smile on her face, she yelled ‘Turbooooo‘ as she passed, and continued streaking up the hill. She had discovered the power of TURBO.

From that point on, whenever we hit a hill of any measure, we selected TURBO and attacked the hill. When we passed riders on ‘regular’ bikes struggling up the hill; we just apologized and kept going. After the last hill, we’d passed above 7200ft and it was mostly downhill from there.

We had multiple rest stops, we drank a lot of water. There were also a few map stops to make sure we were on the right route. Our time for the 28-mile trek was somewhere around 2½ hours. We really enjoyed the trip and enjoyed the eBikes even more. We’d never had made it without them.

Time to hit the hot springs.