How to Access the Colorado 14ers along the Great Divide Mountain Bike Route

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Adventure Cycling‘s Great Divide Mountain Bike Route (GDMBR for short) is one of my favorite off-pavement bike routes in the country. I’ve done two tours of it myself while racing it, and have used segments the route itself quite a bit while doing shorter bikepacking tours. It’s well-designed, lots of beta about accommodations exist, and you’re bound to find like-minded people traveling on the route to bump into.

When I designed my Tour 14er, and later Highest Hundred tour, knowledge of the Great Divide Mountain Bike Route was key in piecing together my own custom route. It’s actually pretty surprising how many 14ers can be accessed without getting too far from the main GDMBR.

Here’s some of the more convenient detours off of the GDMBR to Colorado’s 14ers. Names of mountains will be linked with the appropriate route to the summit from the trailhead my directions give access to.

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FKT of the Year Awards 2018, Why the Tour of the Highest Hundred is so Weird (and why that’s so awesome)

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Blanca Peak, after traversing directly from Little Bear Peak (in the background), Tour of the Highest Hundred , 2017

The 2018 FKTOFTY Awards have been announced. I’ve very thankful that the Tour of the Highest Hundred was selected in the lineup! Although, it didn’t “win”, I really had no reason to think I would! I’m actually a little confused how different FKT attempts can even be compared to each other, but if all we want to do is celebrate FKT projects in general, I think that’s a worthwhile reason to make such lists.

But if I hope that the Tour of the Highest Hundred would win something like a popularity contest… forget it. It’s too long, too hard, too weird, and too obscure to ever become the type of, “Destination FKT” something like the Grand Canyon Rim to Rim to Rim or the John Muir Trail are quickly becoming. And that’s totally fine with me. A litmus test is this: try to visualize exact what teh Highest Hundred challenge would entail. Kinda hard, right? What do you focus on? The distance, the peaks themselves, the elevation gain, the route? It’s a complex mother.

But, there’s a lot of reasons I think going for the Colorado Centennials by bike and by foot self-supported makes a totally life-changing challenge, even if you don’t make it your own FKT.

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The First Ever Longs Peak Self-Powered Duathlon

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Before I completed my first self-powered Longs Peak Duathlon (after a few failures) from Arvada, I knew of only a few others I was certain had made the trip: Bill Wright, The Briggs Brothers, Stefan Griebel. I never thought about who the first people to complete the feat were – perhaps the names were lost in mountaineering history?

That’s until I started reading Paul Nesbit’s, Longs Peak: It’s Story and a Climbing Guide mentioned:

1977: Cleve McCarty of Boulder and his 12-year-old son Eric bicycled to the trailhead, climbed the Kieners route on the East Face […] went down the North Face and biked home, all in one day.

Not bad! Cleve McCarty is fairly well-known in Colorado Mountaineering lore, and that makes it all the stranger that I never heard about this adventure of his. As well as this long day, Cleve once held the FKT for completing the Colorado 14ers: 54 14ers in 54 days (or was it 52 peaks in 52?) back in 1959. He’s also the co-author of High Over Boulder, with Pat Ament.

What’s also amazing is that Eric McCarty repeated the trip with his own 12-year old son, 32 years later!

And of course, Eric is still around, in Boulder, and works a few blocks from where I work. Small place, this world.