Pagosa Springs, Colorado
The Ride the Rockies Beast

By Norm Vance | 6/21/06

Ride the Rockies: This bicycle tour of Colorado often passes through Pagosa Springs. The event, photos and observations below display the 2006 tour which passed through Pagosa June 19th and 20th. 

Confar Hill is a test going south and up but the gravity ride down to Chromo was a delight.

Some years ago someone observed the newspeople and gear that followed a hot news event with changing locations and called it the “media beast.” It travels as a unit and descends on a likely location like a beast or, perhaps, a swarm of locusts. Pagosa’s only media beast occurred with a sled dog race Pagosa once hosted. The “Yukon Jack $10,000 Sled Dog Race” was for money and scoring points for a national championship, and it drew the beast. CBS and ABC television networks had trucks and staff along with smaller news services. It produced the only satellite uplinks ever to rise from Pagosa Springs.

The Ride the Rockies event is a beast-like thing also. The approximately 2,400 riders are only a part of the beast. There are support people for individuals and the event, media, commercial operations and hangers-on. The beast functions like a giant centipede with accordion movement as seen from above. Out front are medical teams, trucks of Port-a-Potties, bike repair tents and similar functions. The riders and all traffic slow and compact together on long uphill sections. They spread out again on the downhill side. At predetermined rest stops, the rider beast comes to a momentary halt before the first in to the stop begin leaving. The beast stops at sundown, has a party and sleeps.

It is always fun when the biking groups come through the area. It gives the town a nice shot of economy and a nice energy.        

Town Park has live entertainment, food and other goodies for
the bikers as they come through Pagosa Springs.

One of those thousand word photos. Hope they told them
to go the Great Pagosa for extra healing.

The Pagosa High School sports field becomes a colorful tent city.

"In the nick of time." The Port-a-Potty beast was the first requirement
at the Chromo rest stop, although, every other tree within miles
seemed to have a volunteer irrigator.

We rarely see motorcycle mounted state troopers here in the outback
but they do a big job for the tour helping with traffic and emergencies.

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