The "Colorado 600" is put on by the Trails Preservation Alliance, a Colorado based group that fights for motorized recreation rights and access. More info here - https://www.colorado600.org/
This ride was probably one of the most physically difficult things I've ever done. Being in a group lead by a Dakar and ISDE racer meant that the days were long and hard. Pretty much everyone wanted to quit at some point, and many did.
The ride took place in the Monarch Pass area in Colorado. Around 70 or so riders would arrive into Monarch Mountain Lodge on Sunday and ride the local roads and trails Monday - Thursday. There were no "official" guided rides, you simply joined a group that fit your riding style and preference. There was a wide range of bikes and people were doing everything from longer paved adventure rides to nearly 100% singletrack. The ride is a fundraiser for a local offroad recreation advocacy group, and it was pretty cool to see a lot of sponsors present in person (or people) - KTM, RockyMountain, and MotionPro being the ones off the top of my head.
Since I was there with Alex and Fred, I wasn't given much of an option but to ride with the "team KTM", with a bunch of KTM guys, a few tag alongs, and Scott Bright leading the way. Scott and most of the people from KTM there are some sort of superhuman riders, so it seemed like things might get gnarly.
On day 1 we started out with 13 riders. The morning started with a pretty easy blast up and over the mountain via the old unpaved road into a neighboring valley. There we picked up some singletrack, which was mostly smooth and sandy with occasional rocky features to go up and over. At lower elevation it was actually pretty similar to Michigan tails, but as we climbed things got rockier and more difficult including a loose rocky never ending climb and subseqent surprisingly slick descent that sent me over the handlebars. After some wider (but very rocky) trail we stopped for gas and food at Pitkin. At this point two of the riders bailed, and as we started the second part of the day, most of us realized they may have been the smart ones. Things got decidedly less Michigan-like with lots of rocky singletrack climbs and decents. The faster riders (i.e. everyone) went ahead while Scotts wife and myself brought up the back. For the last couple hours most of my body stopped working, so it was hard enduro to the max, ending with a nice long singletrack downhill, which included what must have actually been a waterfall. After a brief scare of having a rider lost in the woods, we finally headed back over the pass towards home base. I don't remember how many miles we rode that day, but it was probably close to 100.
This night, as every night afterwards, I went to sleep wheezing from the altitude, dust, and getting jerked awake by dreams of hitting rocks.
On the morning of day 2 I was seriously wondering whether I want to ever look at a motorcycle again. I think we were down to 9 riders in our group at this point. The ride started reasonably easy, with some nice smooth singletrack following a ridgeline from Monarch pass. This trail is multiuse, so coming from Michigan, it was a bit weird dodging hikers and mountain bikers. Most of them seemed fine with us being there, but judging by some of the reactions I can see why there are land use issues here. The trails got progressively harder as we made our way towards our lunch spot at Sargents. Not looking forward to another 4-6 hours of rocks, four of us decided to split off and take an easy dual sport-ish way back. We ended up still hitting up 4-5 miles of singletrack, but most of it was easy two tracks and gravel roads. Getting back early was nice and allowed us to catch up on some much needed bike maintenance. My chain needed adjusting, a bunch of spokes were loose, and the throttle cable was sticking a bit due to me not putting the needle back properly while jetting a couple days prior. When the other guys came in, we knew we made the right choice... even Fred started looking pretty rough. 75ish miles this day.
Down to 8 riders, day 3 started following the same route, but dropping off the ridge a bit earler to follow a trail called Agatt Creek into Sargents. This of course was, to no surprise to anyone, super rocky singletrack, which also included some pretty sweet water crossings. These got more exciting as we made our way down the mountain. Luckily the creek was pretty low this time of the season, so no drowned bikes. We made our way into town for lunch and as usual, a couple folks dropped off. 6 of us went on to ride another 40 or so mile loop, which started with a neverending upward grind on nothing but basketball sized rocks. Once we got on top of the mountain, things smoothed out quite a bit and we had some pretty nice alpine singletrack, where we could maintain decent speed and make decent time. My body started adjusting to both the altitude and constant abuse at this point, so I was actually feeling ok towards the end of the loop and as we hopped onto the highway to make a very chilly way back over the pass to the hotel. I don't remember the mileage for this day, but I'm guessing 80+
At the end of day 3 was the official banquet, which turned out to be a fancy affair for which almost everyone exept the KTM crew and myself seemed to dress in something other than shorts and flip-flops. Somehow our table ended up being the "bad kids" table... I'm pretty sure I even saw Alex drink alcohol :D
Many folks were starting to make their way to the KTM Adventure Rally on Thursday, so Alex, Rob (one of the KTM guys), Fred, and I were on our own. We decided to take an easy day and ride a shorter loop - starting with a ridge run from Marshall pass like the two previous days and making our way down the mountain towards Salida via Greens Creek. My body felt fully acclimated now and my muscles gave up trying to hurt and seemed to start working fine, so I was feeling pretty good. We stopped a bit more to take in the scenery on top before dropping down into Greens Creek. Fred was really starting to struggle with his injured ribs, especially since the trail seemed to cross quite a few boulder fields, and was literally a staircase in places. It was also a lot longer than it looked on the map, but we made our way down eventually, where we hopped back on the highway and rode to the hotel.
Like I said, this was probably the hardest riding I've ever done, every day I got out of bed not knowing exactly where we were were going but knowing that it was going to push me to my limit. I had some crashed, bend some radiators, but aside from a few scrapes and scratches both bike and myself stayed in one piece. I'm glad I did this ride and would probably do it again. Thank you Alex for the invite to hang with the KTM crew, I think it was the best group there!