Roadtrippin' Colorado Style

And the award for the "Fittest Man in America" goes to... this crazy guy! We're approaching 11,000 feet and he's biking the pass?!? Wow. The entire line of traffic gave him a wide berth, in case he were to fall over from a heartattack or something.

Another switchback. As you can tell, we're getting pretty close to timberline now.

CO 82 (yes, we're still on it) hugs the side of the ridge on this part. Can you tell where we're about to be? I can!

Twisting our way past timberline. Have your ears popped yet? Mine have.

Another spot where the acrophobic should close their eyes. This is quite narrow and tight here.

How narrow you ask? Here you go. This shot was taken mere feet from the last one. Don't let go of the wheel.

This is roughly the same shot as this one, only about 1500 feet higher. Yes, the camera is held straight: it's not pointing up at all.

Officially crossing timberline now. And yes, that's a snowbank on the left. Again, the date: August 23, 2005.

And we're still climbing. Those clouds look pretty ominous, don't they? This could make for an interesting descent.

Looking back on where we were again. This road climbs really fast through here. But the scenery makes it worth the drive.

We made it! We are now at 12,093 feet in elevation. I wanted to get out and take a better pitcure of the sign, but there was still lightning in the area. If a bolt were to hit here, I wouldn't want to be outside. Obviously, I'm the only person who saw it that way.

And here's the most obvious sign we'll see on this trip. We're over 12,000 feet up, and we're not expecting to go back down? Heh.

We now get blessed with a parade of various advisory signs. First up, your speed limit. A note for all you lowlanders: don't ride your brakes like the red car in front of us. It does some major damage. Downshift. Manual cars, shift to 2nd, automatic cars: shift to 2, possibly 1. Your engine will not like you, but you'll be able to stop at the end of the pass.

Entry number 2 into the sign parade. (3 if you count the downhill sign). The next one is just a warning that the road takes a sharp turn to the right.

Honestly, I'm surprised the state put up a folding version of this sign here. Makes sense to have this as a permanent install, considering there's still some snow on the ground around the road.

Yeah, we're descending, and we're going to do it fast. At least there's guardrails on this side.

More rock mitigation efforts. These seem to work well considering I can't remember ever hearing that this road was closed due to a rockslide.

A look into the valley where we're going to end up. I really don't like the looks of those clouds.

Now we're down lower looking up to where we were. The rock mitigation work was on the cleared rock face just to the right of center on the road above us.

Okay, this is just scary. The picture above where I comment on guardrails was taken from that road there. Look at how much debris has rained down the cliff over the years. And it'll stay there because it's so close to timberline. One human footprint on ground above timberline can damage the vegetation so much it'll take over 50 years for it to recover. Better to leave the mess there than damage or destroy the ecosystem.

Down in the valley seen from above on the last page lies the ghost town of Independence. Betcha can't tell how Independence Pass got its name, huh? There's a few buildings left here, including a mine shaft nest to the road, but the pictures didn't come out. I'm fighting the rain again, and it's not making things easy.

Rain and streaking windshield wipers on a narrow mountain road. This keeps getting better and better. At least the graupel is gone.

Here's an interesting one. This box culvert is actually above the roadbed on both sides. What is the point of this, or did the road and culvert settle after installation?

Here's the gates for the western side of the pass. The pass closes around mid-October and reopens around Memorial Day usually.

In the middle of the rain now, we approach the first of three spots where the road is not wide enough for two lanes. The first two of these spots are fairly short. The third, well, you'll see soon...

This sign is here as a reinforcement of the rule since there's no yellow line shortly.

Just up the road from the last shot. Still two lanes, but right after the curve...

...there's not. The road is about 1½lanes wide at this point.

Not too long after the prevoius narrow section, we approach the next one.

After this switchback lies a sharp turn to the right. The one lane section starts right at that turn. There's a wide spot to the left on that turn so that if you need to back up (uphill vehicles have the right of way!) you don't have to negotiate the curve, too. You just back up into the "holding area."

There's mist coming off of the road from the rainstorm. Now that we're driving out if it, hopefully the pictures will get better.

Twisting, turning, and descending continues all the way into Aspen.

Approaching the longest single-lane section of this highway. There's no room for passing anything for about the next ½ to ¾ of a mile. Hope that there's not too much oncoming traffic!

There's a lot of blind corners here, too. I started driving as close to the left side of the road as I could just so I could see around the corners.

Again, visibility is limited through here.

Vertical cliff to the right, man-made rock wall holding up the road to your left. We're traveling in a really narrow valley at this point. Right around the corner ahead is where the road widens out again.

Clear of the narrowness now, this is just a winding valley road the rest of the way into Aspen.

Cement barricades have been placed along many parts of this road where there's an issue with rocks falling on the road. These have obviously taken quite a few hits in the past.

Because of all the campgrounds and trails on the west side of the pass that stay open year round, CDOT installed a second set of gates further down the pass. When things get really bad, these close and nobody gets past. This is proven by the wall of concrete barricades to the right. There's dirt piled on this side, but it's a wall on the other.

Downhill from the gates, we get to see some sembalance of a shoulder. It's not a lot, but considering for most of the last few miles the shoulder stripe has been all but painted on the rocks to the side of the road...