I just squeaked it in…the road to Sunrise was scheduled to close on October 10th and the Stevens Canyon Road was only open on the weekends. With a fantastic weather forecast in hand, I was able to do this ride on Saturday, October 7th, 2023. Yes, traffic was sometimes heavy, and when I exited the White River entrance on the return trip from Sunrise there were 114 cars waiting to enter the park. Despite the crowds and traffic, this fall ride through the entire park was resplendent with fall colors. My increased cycling fitness from this year’s training made the climbs very manageable, especially with my Salsa Cutthroat bike and its good climbing gears. I’ve talked about margin and it made all the difference, allowing me to meter my watts and energy expenditure over the 13,435 feet of climbing so as to avoid entering the higher zones of activity…just easy spinning the entire day, and the ability to hammer the downhills, as much as I can hammer on a bike that pedals out at about 27 MPH. There are a lot of things on my list I haven’t done this year, but the quality of my outdoor sojourns has been most excellent!