Tour de Colorado 2009

[BigDaveZJ]

I've been wanting to do a big trip like this for a long time now, and was finally able to make it happen. We covered a lot of miles, a lot of sweet trails, and had an amazing time. We were all exhausted, and quite smelly, by the end of the trip. Noah (rubbersidedown) and Justin (ColoradoXJ) joined us on the trip as well, and I'm sure they will have pics of their own to add as well.

Me, Pam, and Noah left Denver on Saturday morning and headed down 285 to BV. We dropped off the tow rig and car hauler in BV and headed up Cottonwood. The plan was to head north from Taylor Reservoir towards Taylor Pass and camp somewhere near Taylor Lake that night.

We stopped at Taylor Reservoir for a little lunch and to air down and disco the swaybars.

From there we went north towards Taylor Pass. The start of the pass was a bit interesting as we ran into quite a few ATV's and a Jeep on our way up.

The trailer did great coming up out of the creek

Then came Pam

And Noah

Almost up to Taylor Lake

And our campsite for the night above Taylor Lake

 

[BigDaveZJ]

We got up the next morning to a beautiful sunrise.

We broke camp and made the short trip up to the top of Taylor Pass.

And then headed down towards Ashcroft

When we got to Ashcroft our group grew by 1 as Justin was able to join up with us. We hung out for a bit while Justin aired down and disco'd and then we left to head up Pearl Pass.

Looking back as we make our way up

Heading up

 

[BigDaveZJ]

Getting closer to the top

And we're there!

Headed down towards CB

Shortly after the pass we noticed that one of the water jugs in the trailer had managed to leak all over our tent and one of the sleeping bags. We didn't stop for any pics on the way down since we wanted to try and make into Crested Butte in time to get the sleeping bag in a dryer at a laundromat if we needed to. By the time we got to CB though it was almost dry so we filled up the tanks, got some more fire wood, and were on our way.

I had seen pictures from my sister camping at Emerald Lake just below Schofield Pass. It looked like an amazing place to camp, so we headed up that way. The weather was looking a little questionable by this time, but we got to Emerald and the only campsite there was vacant, so we were in luck! We set up camp, and outside of about a 20 minute rain shower we had a great night!

 

[BigDaveZJ]

We got up on Day 3 really looking forward to the trails ahead of us that day. Even though it was over 8 years ago, I had done Pearl and Taylor already. Today we were headed out to Devil's Punchbowl and Lead King Basin, two trails that have been on my to-do list for a VERY long time.

You know you're in for a good day when you see a sign like this!

One of the many beautiful waterfalls we would see.

Getting ready to drop into the canyon

Pam crossing the bridge right below the Punchbowl

Noah

Justin

Little further down, and a looong ways down!

One of about a bazillion pics we took of Crystal Mill

Another one playing with the settings on the camera

Apparently someone needed to cool off a bit

 

[BigDaveZJ]

From the mill we headed down to Marble and had lunch by Beaver Lake before heading back up Lead King Basin.

Lead King was a gorgeous trail, and it looked like we had missed the full bloom of the wildflowers there by less than a week.

Lead King brought us back near Crystal to hook up with Punchbowl again, now we got to go up it!

Can you spot my Jeep?

We headed back to camp and enjoyed an amazing dinner. Our plan was a big steak dinner, but our steak was frozen solid in the cooler still, so Noah and Justin had their steak while we enjoyed some BBQ Chicken. This was probably one of the best overall days I've ever experienced wheeling and/or camping.

 

[BigDaveZJ]

Tuesday morning we got up pretty early and played around with the camera getting some cool shots of Emerald Lake with the sun coming up.

Since we didn't have any major wheeling plans for Tuesday, we thought it would be a great day to have a big breakfast of pancakes, bacon, and eggs. Well, apparently we weren't the only ones enjoying the smell of everything as it cooked. Halfway through my breakfast I noticed something moving in the bushes near camp.

He (or she??) didn't look too big, and wasn't acting aggressive at all, so we just kept an eye on him. He walked down to the lake for a drink, came back up to check us out some more hoping we would leave him some bacon, and then he went back up into the trees.

Beautiful color to the water at Emerald Lake

We headed back up to the top top of Schofield to take Paradise Divide (aka Slate River Rd) back to CB. We figured it'd be similar to Gothic Rd that we came up, but we were in for quite the surprise as the scenery was outstanding.

From CB we took Kebler Pass to Ohio Pass down into Gunny. Our original plan was to camp somewhere on Blue Mesa that night, allowing us to relax, and giving us a chance to clean up a bit in the lake. We weren't finding any suitable camp sites, so we hit a day use area to eliminate some of our stench. We went back into Gunny and stopped at Mario's for dinner before filling up on supplies and heading up towards Almont. From there we went up Taylor Canyon back to Taylor Reservoir, but went south to Tincup. We found a camp site that we lovingly named Camp Cow Patty near Mirror Lake and set up camp for the night.

 

[BigDaveZJ]

Since we had already started our way up Tincup Pass the day before, we started our day by heading up to the top of the pass.

After reaching the top, we headed down the other side towards St. Elmo.

From St. Elmo, we had a multitude of choices, so we came up with a plan that we thought maximized our day down there, and gave Noah an easy exit point as he had to leave Wednesday to head back to down.

We started out by heading up Hancock Pass and going by the Allie Bell mine.

Someone had their Wheaties

Instead of going up over Hancock at this point, we turned off at the townsite and went over Williams Pass.

Most of the north side of the pass is pretty easy

Near the top of the pass, and for the most of the south side though, it was very tight with a lot of big rocks in the trail, kinda reminiscent of Bowling Ball Hill on Wheeler Lake.

The turn at the end is a doozie too if you want to head up to Alpine Tunnel.

 

[BigDaveZJ]

We couldn't help but chuckle at this at Alpine Tunnel.

Shaft's gonna be waitin a VERY long time for that train

We checked out the buildings up there and read about some of the history of the tunnel before heading back down and then over to the south side of Hancock where we ascended the pass.

Noah left us at this point to head down into St. Elmo and back to Denver, and the rest of us decided to run up Tomichi really quick before we headed back to camp. If you look really close in the previous pic you can see the shelf road going up to Tomichi, but we wanted to see it up close.

We made the short climb to the top, and looked back to Hancock.

Since we were running low on daylight, we went right back down where we had just come up. Managed to catch a very faint rainbow in the valley too.

From the bottom of the two passes we made our way west towards Pitkin, stopping occasionally to check out some of the railroad history in the area.

MHJC actually restored this in 1969, I thought that was pretty awesome.

We continued to make our way west along the wide gravel roads. At one point though I ended up getting a little lost in the scenery and drifted over into the ditch on the side of the road. Of course there had to be a big rock there too that took out my front right wheel, and bent up the rear wheel a bit as well. The front wheel is completely destroyed, but my KM2 appears to have come away unscathed, so I was very happy about that. I don't have any pics of the damage, but I know Justin does. After a quick tire change we were on our way. Except I forgot to tighten the lug nuts, d'oh! With the noise it was making I assumed the unit bearing went with the wheel so I started getting my spares and tools out to change that just outside of Pitkin, then I realized none of my lugs were tight. I tightened them up and we filled up on ice in Pitkin before heading back over Cumberland Pass to Tincup and Camp Cow Patty for the night.

 

[BigDaveZJ]

We had originally planned on wheeling yesterday as well and not coming back until today, but we were all freaking exhausted by the night before last. So we took our time breaking camp yesterday and headed back into BV and on to Denver.

All in all it was an amazing trip with some great friends. We covered a lot of miles (300+ not counting round trip from Denver to BV) and saw some amazing Colorado scenery, and experienced very minimal carnage. We also learned a lot on how to make trips like this more practical in the future too, which will be big as I really hope we are able to do many more like this.

Hope you all enjoy the pics!

 

[Backwoods Rambler]

Nice trip, great Pics. Between you, me, Randy & others we could probably have Colorado covered in a year, for the open source project.

 

[Rallyroo]

Great pics. I love the pics of Crystal Mill and Emerald Lake.

 

[d1sc0ver]

Very nice, looks like an awesome time. Thanks for posting up and sharing those great pictures and details.

 

[RevLimit]

Great pics. Hopefully my wife and I will be moving back to the Denver/Colorado Springs area within the next 6 months. Thanks again for posting! Great Scenery! Unfortunately, my current mazda 6s with the low profile tires might not be the vehicle of choice for those roads. ha!

 

[FishPOET]

Great trip report and fabulous pics.

 

[Applejack]

Outstanding shots! Looks like you all had a great time. Thanks for sharing.