Tour of the Sleeping Ute Report

George Baacke completed the 120-mile Tour of the Sleeping Ute last Sunday, and sent in the following report:

Ride Summary:
Cold morning which is why it was good that it started out up hill, by the time I got to Pleasant View was feeling pretty good though never did take off arms and knees.  At Pleasant View made the mistake of taking CR CC instead of BB.  Turns out the pavement ends on CC about a mile prior to CR 10 and CR 10 is dirt between CR CC and CR BB.  That said as dirt roads go it wasn't bad.
CR 10 (CO) and CR 413 (UT) was in reasonably good condition made even better by the by the lack of traffic, not a single vehicle passed me and only saw about 6 coming from the opposite direction.  Essentially had the whole road to myself which is good because the view was spectacular and somewhat distracting particularly given that route at this point was mostly down hill and fairly fast.  Once I hit 401 there was fresh Chip Seal though not the Colorado kind that leaves a lot of loose gravel all over the road.
  Next route finding problem was at the intersection of 401 (though it is labeled as something else) and 407 where the signs indicates Cortez to left at 32 miles and Aneth 9 mile to the right road.  Must of been tired because it took me awhile to realize that it was McElmo canyon.  It may also have been because it did not look at all like the McElmo Canyon road I remember, it had a nice new layer of black chip seal.
UT 162/CO 41 to 160 is best described as rollers with a steady uphill trend.  Surface in Utah was chip seal but with a wide shoulder, in Colorado the surface was a little smoother but had to share a narrow shoulder with a fair amount of vegetation. Once on 160 about 2 - 3 miles of old pavement and you hit the new stuff which was wonderful (and) fast though still had a pesky cross head wind.  The nice thing is this wind turned into a nice tail to push me back to Cortez.  Total time a little over eight hours, ride time a little more over seven hours.

Congratuations, George!