Yukonrider
Member
Finally getting around to posting a trip report about my trip to the Colorado high country and Moab last summer. Seeing as it has been so long some of the finer details have been forgotten, and I have struggled a bit to remember even our exact route, but I hope that you all will at least enjoy the pictures I took! There are a lot of them...
We departed Marquette MI and spent a night in Chicago visiting my parents before hauling out to Denver. We rented a hotel, which I ended up finding too gross to stay in (there were bugs in the bed, for real) so we ended up staying with an old friend of mine and getting the bar scene tour. The next day we spent some time trying to come up with parts to fix my sway bar as I figured one would be nice for driving the twisty roads.
Once I had spent two hours driving around Denver and getting nowhere on the sway bar problem, we set off towards Buena Vista. Up to this point I had a general idea what trails and route I wanted to run, but somewhere near Fairplay we stopped for gas and I picked up “Guide to Colorado Back Roads & 4-Wheel-Drive Trails”. Long story short, after sitting around and reading this book for an hour, I basically re-planned the entire trip in a parking lot in Fairplay
BUY THIS BOOK if you want to drive off road in Colorado!!
http://www.amazon.com/Colorado-Backroads-4-Wheel-Drive-Trails-Edition/dp/1934838047
So new route plannedwe headed towards Buena Vista to drive up Mt. Princeton, which looked like it would be a good introduction to driving shelf roads. We arrived in the pouring rain and started on up.
The pucker factor was high once the thunder started when we neared the top and saw the steep drop off’s and narrow road. For a first timer it was unnerving.
The view from the to was under-whelming due to the heavy rain and my un-willingness to leave the car, so we headed down and went to set up camp on Grizzly Lake.
On the first day of the trip would turn out to be the only time I would use my winch for self recovery on any of the trails mentioned in the guide, as my tired self couldn’t make it up the ledge immediately out of a stream in the rain, there was just too much water and mud. I also managed to back into a tree due to wet brakes and dent up my tailgate, first ever bent sheet metal in 5 years of hard wheeling.
This was an awesome campsite! The pictures of it have been lost though. We woke up the next day and ran the Iron Chest Mine trail, this was a lot of fun.
From there we headed down Tin Cup Pass and stopped to explore St Elmo. We camped on Mirror Lake.
The next day we finally broke out of the rain for the first time
Headed up Taylor Pass
Camped somewhere, My memory of exactly which trail I took here eludes me, but we came upon this situation on our way in.
A guy had manage to take a brand new Dodge Ram down this trail, then turned around, slashing 3 tires in the process, amongst a bunch of other body damage. When we pulled up he had no hopes of getting out, and was surrounded by guys on quads. We figured his only shot was if we helped him, so we re-arranged, and took him and some tires to Aspen to get that sorted.
The poor runner was struggling at this altitude with all the weight.
Top of Taylor
Got to Aspen, found the only tire shop was like 20 miles away, get there and his rims are cracked and ruined, but they manage to get tires on, and back up Taylor pass we go.
We get his truck back together and begin the ordeal of walking him through the trail, it went quicker than expected.
Top of Taylor
Thats me! Pretty stoked we got this guy out of the impossible spot he was in. It took us all day, but he was so greatful and I hope at least it gave him and his son something to remember forever.
He gave us a few dollars for our troubles, so we being responsible young people decided to go out in Aspen.
WOW, the scenery at night in Aspen is top notch, if you know what I mean. We got lots of funny looks as we are quite obviously NOT Aspen material. Anyways $100 or so later, we had a beer each (seriously it was $9 for rail whiskey coke Those are $3 here).
We camped somewhere up Pearl pass.
We departed Marquette MI and spent a night in Chicago visiting my parents before hauling out to Denver. We rented a hotel, which I ended up finding too gross to stay in (there were bugs in the bed, for real) so we ended up staying with an old friend of mine and getting the bar scene tour. The next day we spent some time trying to come up with parts to fix my sway bar as I figured one would be nice for driving the twisty roads.
Once I had spent two hours driving around Denver and getting nowhere on the sway bar problem, we set off towards Buena Vista. Up to this point I had a general idea what trails and route I wanted to run, but somewhere near Fairplay we stopped for gas and I picked up “Guide to Colorado Back Roads & 4-Wheel-Drive Trails”. Long story short, after sitting around and reading this book for an hour, I basically re-planned the entire trip in a parking lot in Fairplay
BUY THIS BOOK if you want to drive off road in Colorado!!
http://www.amazon.com/Colorado-Backroads-4-Wheel-Drive-Trails-Edition/dp/1934838047
So new route plannedwe headed towards Buena Vista to drive up Mt. Princeton, which looked like it would be a good introduction to driving shelf roads. We arrived in the pouring rain and started on up.
The pucker factor was high once the thunder started when we neared the top and saw the steep drop off’s and narrow road. For a first timer it was unnerving.
The view from the to was under-whelming due to the heavy rain and my un-willingness to leave the car, so we headed down and went to set up camp on Grizzly Lake.
On the first day of the trip would turn out to be the only time I would use my winch for self recovery on any of the trails mentioned in the guide, as my tired self couldn’t make it up the ledge immediately out of a stream in the rain, there was just too much water and mud. I also managed to back into a tree due to wet brakes and dent up my tailgate, first ever bent sheet metal in 5 years of hard wheeling.
This was an awesome campsite! The pictures of it have been lost though. We woke up the next day and ran the Iron Chest Mine trail, this was a lot of fun.
From there we headed down Tin Cup Pass and stopped to explore St Elmo. We camped on Mirror Lake.
The next day we finally broke out of the rain for the first time
Headed up Taylor Pass
Camped somewhere, My memory of exactly which trail I took here eludes me, but we came upon this situation on our way in.
A guy had manage to take a brand new Dodge Ram down this trail, then turned around, slashing 3 tires in the process, amongst a bunch of other body damage. When we pulled up he had no hopes of getting out, and was surrounded by guys on quads. We figured his only shot was if we helped him, so we re-arranged, and took him and some tires to Aspen to get that sorted.
The poor runner was struggling at this altitude with all the weight.
Top of Taylor
Got to Aspen, found the only tire shop was like 20 miles away, get there and his rims are cracked and ruined, but they manage to get tires on, and back up Taylor pass we go.
We get his truck back together and begin the ordeal of walking him through the trail, it went quicker than expected.
Top of Taylor
Thats me! Pretty stoked we got this guy out of the impossible spot he was in. It took us all day, but he was so greatful and I hope at least it gave him and his son something to remember forever.
He gave us a few dollars for our troubles, so we being responsible young people decided to go out in Aspen.
WOW, the scenery at night in Aspen is top notch, if you know what I mean. We got lots of funny looks as we are quite obviously NOT Aspen material. Anyways $100 or so later, we had a beer each (seriously it was $9 for rail whiskey coke Those are $3 here).
We camped somewhere up Pearl pass.
