Mt Evans Hail Storm From Hell

The Triple Bypass is next weekend and a few of us decided we needed a challenge to see if our training had paid off. We decided to ride to the top of Mt. Evans from Evergreen, Colorado. Evergeen is about 7000 feet, Mt Evan's is 14, 277 feet so It's about 35 miles of climbing at altitude and then the same distance again in descent.

Jim Pefanis and I met John Bissert and two of his friends at Bergan Park. We started up the mountain at 7:AM and rode the first leg of the trip up Squaw pass to Echo Lake (11,140ft) . As we rode everyone commented on how perfect the day was and how nice and cool it was.

JB and his buddy Warren rode up a bit faster than we did so we agreed to meet up later. Jim and I rode up to Echo Lake and took a long rest and refilled our water bottles. Echo Lake is the entrance to to the 14 mile road up to Mt. Evans, and there's a $3/per person fee to use the road.

At Echo Lake, we started up the road to Mt. Evans. Jim decided that he would stop after a couple miles and turn around to head down. I couldn't blame him since we all were riding the Triple Bypass in 6 days, and a ride like this so close to the event, was not necessarily a good training strategy. Also, since the weather up around Mt. Evan's had been dark and cloudy all morning, a storm seemed pretty likely.

Jim took off down and I kept riding up the mountain. The air gets pretty cold the higher you go, and I stopped to put on my jacket and head band. As I headed toward the summit, I could see lightning occasionally, and started hearing thunder. A light rain started to fall, but I felt pretty well protected.

As I rode on, I passed some people and got passed by a few others. I was soon at the 6 mile marker and moving pretty fast, but it was also getting pretty cold now and the light rain had increased to a drizzle. I stopped to put on my new REI silk shirt and discovered that it was actually new REI silk long underwear bottoms! I stood there and stared at them stunned, and then stuffed them back in my jersey while muttering something to myself about how if I died of hypothermia, I'd deserve it for being such an idiot.

The lightning and thunder was getting closer and more frequent, and the traffic coming down was seeming more and more urgent. I continued on, but soon decided to just ride to the next mile marker and then turn around.

I got to the 8 mile mark, was stopping to turn around and just then saw JB on his way down. I yelled and he stopped. I told him I was heading down and we agreed to meet at the Echo Lake store. By this time the rain had turned into small hail and the lightning and thunder was pretty alarming. I put on my waterproof mits and got going down.



I passed a couple who were riding pretty slowly. The road at this section was extremely exposed and the ride down has some really unnerving views. The side of the road is basically a cliff, and someone on a bike, about 4 or 5 feet from the road edge would be in some serious hurt if a gust of wind happened to blast them off the edge. The girl was very scared and was asking her friend if they should stop. He answered "Not here! Keep going!".

I passed them by and just about then the hail turned from small mushy pellets into hard icy projectiles. Soon the size of them increased to about the size of large (frozen) grapes, and it turned from a little scary and annoying into an extremely painful and dangerous bombardment. The balls of ice were penetrating the holes in my helmet and were painfully pummeling my arms, shoulders and face.

This was now the worst hail storm I'd ever experienced and I was on a mountain side with no cover, and with lightning and thunder crashing all around. I headed for a spot on the mountain side that was most leeward and tried to protect myself from the painful hail. I managed to get my head and shoulders protected but my legs and back continued to get pounded by the increasingly large and intense balls of ice. I wondered if I was dooming myself to a lightning strike by cowering against the rock to avoid hail damage.

While I cowered, my head was covered but I could watch as the hail violently pummeled and bounced off the road. It accumulated rapidly, and what was a gleaming wet road in a green and rocky mountain side, was now completely white. I watched as my bike slowly began to be covered by the accumulating hail.

As I wondered how long I'd have to endure the bombardment, a ranger truck drove by, stopped, and then backed up quickly. My bike was pretty hard to see now, and I thought it was going to drive over it, but the driver managed to park right next to it. I jumped up and a second later was inside the truck, thanking the ranger for stopping. Inside the truck the hail was unbelievably loud, and we sat for awhile before deciding to turn around and head down. I jumped back out into the bombardment, and put my bike in the back of the truck.



Jockying the ranger truck back and forth to turn around would have been pretty scary any time, but in the hail, with thunder and lightning crashing all around it was absolutely terrifying. I buckled up and hung on white knuckled as the ranger (Harry) managed it with little trouble, and we were on our way down.

I felt unbelievably lucky that the ranger had stopped for me. As we headed down, the hail started to slow, but it was now several inches deep on the road. Nothing with only two wheels could drive in these conditions.

On our way down we passed a lot of motorcycles and a few bikers who had taken cover in the many tourists cars that had also been caught in the storm. It seemed like everyone who had cars was helping out the imperiled bikers.

Harry dropped me off at the Echo Lake store, I enthusiastically thanked her, got my bike out of the back of the ranger truck, and went in. Soon the Echo Lake gift store was packed with travelers trying to get out of the rain. When JB, Warren and Brian showed up, we traded stories of our experience/rescue and watched the rain outside. It wasn't slowing down. Eventually we decided to brave the rain ("Hey, it's only rain!") and head down.

It was a long, wet, cold, nerve racking ride from Echo Lake back down to Evergreen, but after the Hailstorm from Hell, it seemed downright pleasant.