At dinner Thursday night (7/2) my wife said if I could get up early and be back early she'd be ok with me riding up Mount Evans. I was excited. My mind was abuzz and I was in full on prep mode all night.

I got up around 4:30am and headed out, driving west along I-70 away from the rising sun.

I got to Echo Lake around 5:30 and was on my bike, pedalling past the fee station at 5:35am.

The first three miles were rough. But once I got past Mount Goliath I began to fall into stride.

I saw a couple bighorn sheep up close just a couple miles below Summit Lake. It was amazing to see them standing majestically over the road. Calling them "sheep" is kind of a misnomer. They seemed more like large deer with huge horns.

I also saw tons of marmots along the way (cheeky marmots!)

I stopped at Summit Lake at mile 9 for a little while to let my feet rest and stop tingling and then I started up the final stage...

At about mile 12 I began to feel the effects of altitude, but there was no way I was going to stop so close to the summit. I crawled into the summit parking area and stepped off the bike. I knew I had made it and I was looking forward to the screaming ride down.

But there was one final leg of the climb. I shouldered my bike and started up the trail from the parking lot to the summit proper. And so, three hours after I clipped into my pedals I summited my first fourteener at 14,264'. The ride was 14 miles and approximately 4,000' in elevation gain. I pedalled for 2 hours and 27 minutes, but including my rest stops it took me right at 3 hours.

The feeling was incredible. The views along Mount Evans Road are nearly indescribably and the pictures do not do it justice. Just a few short months ago I would only have fantasized about doing this kind of things, and with only a few hours of planning I pulled it off. That's what proximity to the mountains will do.

40 minutes after slipping back onto my bike saddle at the summit parking area I was back at my car. I had not seen a single cyclist on the way up, but I saw literally hundreds on the way down and between Echo Lake and Idaho Springs. I was the first one up but definitely not the last on that Fourth of July. I will never forget my first fourteener.