New toys and an early Winter ride to Loveland Pass

It was the day after Christmas and Santa brought new toys for this moto-blogger.

The first was a replacement camera for the 12 year old one I managed to lose recently.

source: Digital Review

After conferring with Bobskoot, this was the camera I asked from Santa.  It's specs are here.  The major selling points were 12x Optical zoom, slim form factor and really, I needed a camera for future rides.

The second toy, which my wife surprised me with with the collusion of Gary France, was a GoPro Hero HD Motosports videocamera.

source: goprocamera.com

I believe it's the same camera used in his epic four month+ journey across these united states by Gary France and a fellow uralista in Minnesota by the name of Chris Luhman.

Armed with all these electronics, I naturally headed out into the mountains the day after Christmas to see if I could find some snow.  We in the front range have not seen much of the white stuff since October though reports of hit accumulating in feet up in the mountains have made it on to the nightly news.  Not to mention the east coast getting slammed by it recently.

Got a pretty late start but managed to cruise through Morrison by 10:30AM or so, motoring past the usual towns of Idledale, Kittredge and finally through Evergreen where I picked up Upper Bear Creek Road west.
Soon I was turning northwards onto Witter Gulch Road heading towards Squaw Pass on CO103, the road which takes one to Echo Lake and the Mount Evans Road (closed for the winter).

Witter Gulch Road is a mostly dirt road with some heavily washboarded sections which threaten to shake my fillings loose in my head.  This road though was a good test of the suction cup mount pictured above for mounting the GoPro camera to the sidecar rig.  It stayed mounted securely the whole day, but I still felt good about having also attached a safety strap.

Once on CO103, I continued up the 9+ miles ride to Echo Lake Lodge which sits at the entrace to the Mount Evans Road.  Road conditions weren't exactly "great" for two-wheeled vehicles but of course, since I was on Natasha, that didn't matter as much.

These folks decided to have an extended chat near Natasha as I waited for them to move.

So, they ended up in the shot instead.

 Snow-covered Echo Lake 

After Echo Lake, I continued on CO103 to the town of Idaho Springs.  From there it was frontage road riding till I got to Dumont, CO where I checked in with my loving wife.  She confirmed for me that the road to Loveland Pass was open but with icy spots.  

To make time, I got on the westbound slab of I-70 and soon enough was exiting at the US6/Loveland Pass junction.  The road was clear and mostly dry all the way to the top and points beyond.  Lots of cars and folks at the top of the pass since the weather was pretty warm for early Winter.  Here's a video of Natasha and I riding up to the pass and a couple of miles beyond.  There is no audio for this clip.

I stopped near the Arapahoe Basin Ski resort to turn Natasha around and get these shots.

 This is the furthest point west on US6 that I rode to on Sunday

 A nice background of far off snow-covered mountain peaks

 A closer view of the far off peaks, thanks to the optically-stabilized zoom on the new camera

A-Basin down below from where I parked.

Yes, I know about embedding a music file, just trying to work out copyright issues and such.  Perhaps a fellow blogger can point me to public domain stuff that's freely available for future videos.

I am pleased to report both cameras worked great.  Now to figure out how to edit the results and produce usable footage faster.  My laptop is sure not cutting it, will have to borrow Martha's which is more powerful.

I made it home by 4:00PM by using the I-70 slab all the way to the E-470 beltway, traffic was lighter than usual for a Sunday afternoon so I took advantage of this.  

Hope you got a ride in!