The Gold Belt Tour

Today I got out for about 3 hours of one of the nicest rides I've done in a while. It wasn't on singletrack but it was still really cool. I drove out to Gilett and parked near the KOA and started a really nice loop towards Cripple Creek and then through Victor. This area is rich in mining history and there's still a lot of gold being extracted from that area. My loop basically went around one of the largest mines in that area. In the slideshow you'll see one picture with tiered levels of gravel. They were massive. On the right of the picture you'll see two dump trucks. Those trucks use tires that are over 12 feet high. You can barely see them in the picture. There's also a picture of my bike next to one of those tires. They have a max load of 311 tons and they cost $24,500 a piece. I'm definitely going back to ride that loop again. I passed up several opportunities to ride up either trails or gravel roads to check out really old mine shafts and equipment.