The Dirty Copper Triangle

August 5th was the date of this year’s Copper Triangle bike race, a classic road route that traces out a big loop from Copper Village to Leadville to Vail and back to Copper Village. As one of the more well-known road races in the state, it’s a popular one that’s been held annually for a long time.

So naturally at some point the mountain bikers came up with their own dirt version of the Copper Triangle which loosely follows a similarly themed loop between Camp Hail and Copper. Also (or perhaps originally) known as the “Copper Three Pass”, the route traverses over Searl and Kokomo Passes along Section 8 of the Colorado Trail, then climbs up and over Ptarmigan Pass along the Resolution Road. From there it descends down Wilder Gulch to Vail Pass and then shares a few miles of the road race route back down to Copper. A nice video recap of the loop broken down by section can be found here, and below is a Relive rendering based off our GPX track for the day:

Parker and I had been eying the loop all summer and figured why not show our solidarity to all the road bikers and ride the dirty version of the Copper Triangle on the same day as the actual Copper Triangle (just kidding, turns out it was a complete accident that we managed to pick the exact same day). As we were gearing up at Camp Hail we noticed several roadies with bibs flying down Highway 24. It took all of our deductive reasoning powers to figure out it was indeed the Copper Triangle race happening at the exact same time, which supplied lots of comedic relief for the rest of the day.

Common consensus is that the most demanding part of the route is the ascent up the Resolution Road after descending into Camp Hail. Not only because it’s a big climb but it’s also usually done in the heat of the day when riders are tired after the big ascent up and over Searle and Kokomo Passes. So we figured why not start at Camp Hail and get that part of the route over with first, saving the more fun ascent up Searle and the longest, most fun descent down from Kokomo for the end of the day? Not only that but starting in Camp Hail made for a shorter drive from home for both of us.

After breaking off the road (this turn is somewhat easy to miss), the descent down Wilder Gulch was pretty quick and fun. Lots of faint, partially overgrown single and double track and a few stream crossings to negotiate. It’s a beautiful drainage and one that feels fairly secluded despite the fact that it empties out right into I-70. Then from Vail Pass we coasted on down the bike path among several Copper Triangle riders down to Copper.

After a stop off in Copper to fill up our water bottles we peddled up the front-side access road of the resort and then hit the Colorado Trail shortly after. From there it’s a long, grinding ascent up the Guller Creek drainage, the same route used as the standard access to Janet’s Cabin. We worked our way up the trail in the heat of the day and eventually broke tree line. Above the hut it was still somewhat time consuming to attain Searle Pass, as there were a few sections of hike-a-bike (for us at least) just below the top.

The portion of the route between Searle and Kokomo was the one section we really didn’t know much about. It’s a high, undulating traverse at 12,000 feet that wraps around and through several small gullies falling off the ridgeline between Elk Mountain and Corbett Peak. I think we were both expecting this section to go down quickly but it ended up feeling long and draining by that point in the day. It’s a gorgeous section of trail though and one that isn’t easily attained coming from either direction.

Under darkening skies we tried to pick up the pace and eventually made it to the high point of the traverse and the high point of the entire route in fact at 12,300 feet. From there it’s sort of a double fall line descent for a few hundred feet down to Kokomo Pass.

We threw on rain shells, gulped down some fluid and started the nearly 3,000 foot descent down Cataract Creek. Rain starting coming down which made for some interesting riding above tree line.

But after losing a few thousand feet of elevation down the mostly non-technical trail, the rain cells had blown over and we had a sunny, dry descent down into Camp Hail.

All in all this is a fun adventure route that I’d recommend checking out if you like a physical challenge, long days in the saddle, alpine singletrack and don’t mind peddling up some Jeep road. And don’t forget to ride the route on the same day as the road race if you wanna do ‘er extra dirty 😀

Cheers!