Coal Creek Canyon Road

Another great winter riding day here in the Rockies. I left the house with temperatures in the mid 40s and sunny. This would change to partly cloudy and the temperature would plunge to the high 30s in the mountains to almost 62 in the front range!

I cut across Denver using the I-225/25 slabs until I got to US6 which takes you West out of the Denver Metro area. I approached Golden using this highway and saw the light was hitting the buttes near Golden and the Colorado School of Mines favorably so I stopped:

The rock formations that overlook the Colorado School of Mines

I continued on CO 93 out of Golden itself, rode Northwards towards CO 72, aka Coal Creek Canyon Road. This used to be a toll supply route for miners and such up in the Blackhawk area. LINK click the link if you want to read some of the history.

It's a really nice two lane highway, with lots of pine trees on both sides of the road and very twisty in some spots. The shoulders on the side of the roads were not very wide to start with, and with the remaining snow/gravel accumulations there is very few spots to safely stop one's motorcycle for pictures.

I rode up to the highest point and then back on down the other side of the mountain. Pinecliffe and Wondervu were the only two concentrations of wooden buildings along this highway, not even big enough to call them hamlets really. For those of you who like hairpin turns, there's plenty of them on the western side of the mountain traversed by Coal Creek Canyon. Beware the gravel on the center lines of each lane though, it can make life interesting when your rear wheel skips out momentarily from under you. I managed to keep these type of interesting events down to just one for this ride.

I reached the junction of CO72 and CO119, the Peak to Peak Highway, and I headed North towards Nederland since the sign said it was only 3 miles away. Well, the town limits are 3 miles away but it was closer to six before I hit the town itself. I turned myself around and headed on back on CO119 past the junction with CO72.

I stopped after one set of twisting turns at the southern end of a small lake where the Gilpin County border lies. Here's a picture of the lake, frozen over, with some peaks in the background:

Part of Los Lagos Reservoir

From here I returned once again to CO72 and retraced my riding back towards Golden. I'd mentioned there were plenty of hairpin turns on this road and here's one of the more photogenic ones:

A 10 mph limit hairpin turn, they really mean it!

Shortly after the above hairpin, I found a spot on the side of the road where I could pull off and still see the distant mountain peaks covered in snow:




I twisted my way through this wonderfully clear road all the way back to Golden. There was very little gravel or wet spots on the road and I was even able to explore a couple of side roads which were paved and led to housing areas. The dirt roads were muddy or snow-covered or both, so I stayed off of those this time around.

Back on CO 93 heading back towards Golden, I stopped near where the road junctions with the road to Leyden. There's a pretty long rocky ridge formation to the East of CO 93 which I took pictures of:

West 82nd Avenue and CO 93

Looking towards Leyden

Far as I can tell, this minor rock formation is not named

I retraced my way back through the outskirts of Golden, CO. The rest of the ride home was slabs and uneventful in spite of the pretty heavy traffic on the highways.

A pretty good ride and using CO 72 is an attractive alternative to using CO 119 from I-70 which is where the Peak to Peak Road begins.