As the heat climbed to a high of 86 degrees Saturday, cyclists gathered in Durango for Ride the Rockies, which runs Sunday to Friday.

The annual ride has a new route every year. This year’s route, originally planned for 2020 but delayed by the COVID-19 pandemic, starts and ends in Durango, looping through Cortez, Norwood, Ridgway and Ouray in the process. The ride is temporarily headquartered at the La Plata County Fairgrounds.

“I’m excited because this is a part of the state I haven’t spent a lot of time in,” said Susan Eissenberg of Evergreen, who is riding the route with her husband, Mike. “It’s a really beautiful part of the state.”

The couple has ridden at least parts of previous Ride the Rockies seven or eight times, and despite being alone this year, usually bring family along, including their brothers, children and John’s mother – on the back of a tandem bike.

“I think that the Colorado mountains are beautiful and I wanted the personal challenge,“ Susan said.

While the route is the same as it would have been in 2020, there are now protocols in place to fight the spread of coronavirus, said Ride The Rockies tour director Deirdre Moynihan.

“Everything changes rapidly with COVID,” she said. “One day you’re in lockdown, the next day it’s ‘wear masks,’ then you’re vaccinated, and then the world opens, but then different municipalities have different rules. So we have a pretty strict protocol in place."

The tour has a disinfectant company traveling with it, “just to make sure we’re keeping every high-touch environment clean,” she said. “That’s just to instill a confidence in everyone that we’re trying to pay attention.”

Ride the Rockies is keeping participants socially distanced as much as possible and allowing vaccinated participants to go maskless.

“We have people coming from 50 states,” Moynihan said. “It’s really important that we do not come into these small communities and bring COVID, bring a variant. We have to be very responsible not to bring COVID there.”

Even with COVID-19 protocols in place, she said people are still “gnawing at the door” to get into the ride. This year, Ride the Rockies registered 2,300 participants, knowing the number would drop because of attrition. The actual number of cyclist riding will be closer to 1,950.

Moynihan said the registration numbers were the highest they have been since 2014. The ride sold out in late May.

She said the tour is trying to leverage its large numbers to help communities hosting the event by encouraging participants to support the towns it rides through.

“Ride the Rockies’ mission is to support the communities, and so many restaurants took such a hit with COVID, we’re really encouraging that people get out and about into the communities,” she said.

Tim Walsworth, executive director of Durango Business Improvement District, said the extra crowds in town are certainly appreciated by the business community.

“We get them for three nights,” he said. “What a great way to jump-start our summer.”

The BID, Visit Durango, Durango Trails, the city, the county and United Way of Southwest Colorado all came together to form a committee to fulfill Durango’s host community requirements.

He said the timeline was compressed this year because of the pandemic, but the various organizations were familiar with the requirements because Durango has hosted Ride The Rockies before.

Durango is likely to benefit, too, from family staying in town while their loved ones ride the route. For instance, Karin Papenhausen of Knoxville, Tennessee, plans to stay in Durango while her husband, John Campbell, rides the loop.

“It’s a really nice place to have a home base,” she said.

Papenhausen plans to ride her bike, doing some mountain and gravel biking, while caring for the couple’s two dogs. She also plans to cheer Campbell on and meet him in Cortez and Ouray for dinner and beer.

The couple said it was their first time at Ride the Rockies, and they were drawn to it by friends from east Tennessee who have done it before and talked it up.

“We’ve been wanting to do this for years,” she said.

About 50% of the ridership of Ride the Rockies is people who haven’t ridden it before, Moynihan said. For some, like Campbell, it’s just been on their bucket list. Others got bicycles as something to do during COVID-19.

Moynihan said one of the few silver linings to the pandemic is that it is rejuvenating the sport.

“It’s kind of funny to me because I get these question like ‘Is there water at aid stations?’ and I’m like, ‘Well, of course there’s water at aid stations.’ But then you realize that we really have a new community.”

The other half of the participants have ridden Ride the Rockies before, including father-and-son team Tony and Andrew Mitchell of northern Virginia, who are riding the tour for the third time as a way of celebrating Father’s Day.

“It’s a way to get a nice vacation outside.” Andrew said.

ngonzales@durangoherald.com