Biggest or toughest climb or ride ???

Saw this on another forum and thought I'd post it here. I did see a few responses that included the rides I have done.

I have 2 toughest climbing rides to my credit. Other than Mt Baldy a couple hundred times as training rides for these rides.

The toughest would be Breathless Agony. The climbing is pretty much finished at 72 miles into the ride with a gain of 12,000 ft. Then all down hill from there.

Total is 112 miles with 12,000 ft gain. I completed this ride on my first attempt and hope someday to do it again before I get too old.

I have the cool earned jersey. Out of all the riders I've met over the last 25 years, I've only seen about 10 guys over the years wearing one.




The second toughest ride I did was Ride Around the Bear. I completed this all 4 times I rode it. Good ride, loved it. Most of the 10,000 ft is completed in the first 62 miles.

I trained well for this ride. Timed event. Serious climbers only as advertised. I know a couple hundred riders and a whole lot on the cycling forums since 2002. Only about 10 cyclists I know have completed this ride.

400 riders allowed and I placed at #123 out of 400. Not bad for being 230 pounds at the time of the ride. Nothing better than being a big guy passing riders on a mountain ride that look like Lance ha ha ha!

 

I’ve done Col de Tourmalet, a regular on the TdF. That was a beast.
Naive navigation led us to some that took even more effort, but weren’t rideable. On one, we pretty much ended up using our bikes as Mountaineers’ axes, lifting the bikes ahead of us, stabbing the hillside pedal into the slope as a climbing aid.

 

Nice, never had a chance to ride there but I owned a Lemond Tourmalet at one time.

Speaking of using the bike, a buddy and I (he's in the pic) rode up the local ski lifts. We did a 5 mile clime with 2,000 ft of gain on a dirt trail that parallels the ski lift chairs.

I didn't have a Garmin at the time but he said I would laugh if he told me the grade reading on his Garmin. OK tell me, he said it was 84%. I don't know about that but on the final stretch to the top, in the pic, was impossible to ride up. I took 2 pedal strokes and just about fell off my bike twisting my ankle. I tried 5 times and it was not happening.

So we both walked our bikes up but it was tough. I would walk up about 10 yards and have to stop. Took me about 5 times stopping on this slope. He was behind and having a hard time. We were at the 8500 ft level at this point. It overlooks GMR (Glendora Mt Rd) shown in the background where plenty of cyclists ride up the mtn roads. Not many where we were ha ha!

I doubt it was 84% and probably corrected when he plugged it in. Now that I think of it, I'll have to contact him and ask if it changed when he plugged in.

But that was one ride I had to use my bike to get up the slope.

 

Some years ago, I think in 79, my team went for a little 3 day trip to Owens Valley California for a ride up the Onion Valley road on the first day, I can't recall the details except it was around a 22,000-foot climb; we stayed 4 nights and the 3rd day did the Horseshow Meadows ride, I don't recall that foot climb...or maybe Horseshoe Meadows was 22,000 feet and I can't recall the Onion one? I don't know but it was a lot of steep climbing. Both of those were the steepest climbs in California and that is why my team leader wanted us to go for the experience. We were in the area for 3 days, the second day was a rest day so we all went fly fishing at Taboose Creek up the road from Lone Pine.

We stayed at some motel in Lone Pine, Dow, or Low Villa I think was what is it was called.

 

My toughest were:

* Col de l'Iseran, which at 2770 meters is quite a climb
* Colle San Carlo in Italy, not too high, but between 10-15% for an hour
* The crest on road 7 between Argentina and Chile, which at 3200 is my highest point as a biker
* San Pellegrino in Alpe in Italy, at 18% for 2 km regarded as one of the 10 toughest climbs in Europe. I gave up...
* Col du Ouano at 2910 meters in Morocco. Very desolate, gravel.

 

Good stuff!

 

I did the Death Ride several times and did the circumnavigation of Lake Tahoe. While the climbs don't seem terribly steep they are all from 2,000 to 3,000 meters high so there is a considerable lack of oxygen. This is a bit hard for me since one of my engineering projects was to provide a poison gas detector for the military and in the process of entering and leaving the gas chamber, I didn't allow it sufficient time to pump out and the gas scarred my lungs pretty bad. But I still try to climb.