Westbound and Down: The LGAA planning thread

There are plenty of challenging trails with legit obstacles. Unlike the East Coast, most everything is more of a road than a trail, meaning that it goes somewhere and isn't just a place to drive off-road. For wheeling, Southern CO is where it's at. Start at Buena Vista and go South. Avoid the Front Range (Boulder/Denver area).

Plenty of stuff that I'd need y'all to pull me up if I could get up it at all.

https://www.google.com/search?q=chi...9d_XAhVE5oMKHW_RBw8Q_AUICygC&biw=1244&bih=699

 

Boulder is a hippy college party city?

 

Maybe in its past life. Think more Silicon Valley just in the mountains.

 

I imagine that for Highlands Ranch too. I was there in 2014, but it looked exactly the same as where I am now.. (in the suburbs of DC)

 

I might be interested in this. Although Colorado is pretty lame...

 

Super lame

 

Sweet bike and taco

 

Lets get the ball rolling in here shall we?
I mapped out some potential routes and locations to camp and have been doing quite a bit of exploring and research lately.
Day 1
Im thinking first of all we take I70 out, drive for 14.5 hours on day one and camp at a place called little lost creek conservation area in Missouri just outside St Louis. Im thinking if most of us leave between 6-7am we should all arrive by 9:30-10pm. LLCCA doesnt charge for primitive camping and it is allowed around one of 4 major lots. Here is a map of the area and potential sites.

For those that would rather stay in a hotel on the first night, I found nearby Holiday Inn or an Americas Best Value Inn or Relax Inn.

Day 2
We would have to leave before around 7am to arrive in colorado springs by around 6:30pm, where we would get to see the first location, Garden of the gods. GOTG closes at around 11pm, so we should have ample time and plenty of sunlight to do touristy things. Im thinking we should spend around 2 hours or less here so that we can get to the second campsite before 10pm.

Now I found a few different options for camping/lodging here. The first is a tent site near Pikes peak, according to this site, all camping in the national forest is free and you are free to camp wherever. I chose this location personally since its near a lake if anyone wants to fish in the morning (or that night I suppose) but there are many.

Another option is called Barr camp, this is an isolated cabin just off Barr trail, which is a hiking trail that runs up pikes peak. This is literally just a cabin with mattresses and a few amenities, rates can be found in the above link. There is no potable water, no heat, and no cooking equipment so its very bare bones. There is also NO access to this lodge via a full-size trail, so you would have to hike your way up with everything you need on your back.

Another option is a site called Crags Campground the fee to camp here is $18 and you're allowed 2 vehicles per site. I am unsure of how many sites there are but it received good reviews and has bathrooms and water. The only reason I wasn't super attracted to this site was because it says its usually high traffic.

The last option is a place called Rocky Top Motel & Campground, which has a Motel that costs about $90 a night. There are tent sites as well that cost $30 a night and can fit 4 people (probably 2 vehicles). There is no electricity but there are restrooms and showers as well as internet on the tent sites.

Theres obviously many more options but these are the few I chose.

Here is the Route for days 1 and 2 including the stop in missouri

Day 3
Now we can start slowing it down a bit, Im thinking we start our day at 8-9am and first drive up Pikes Peak. All of the lodging seems relatively equidistant so we could probably knock this out in about 2 hours. We would then depart at around 11am and head towards the passes.

The drive is about 5.5 hours meaning we would arrive at the first Pass (engineer pass) at around 6:30. From here I have not found lodging yet but I have mapped a route that takes us through Engineer Pass, Poughkeepsie gulch (which looks fun af), Imogene Pass, and Black Bear pass. Im thinking we should start Engineer Pass in the morning however, since if we started at 6:30 we would only have 2 hours to do it and we would probably be in the shadows anyway. I also think we should find Passes between Pikes peak and Engineer because 5.5 hours across this beautiful state on highways doesnt make sense to me.

Here is the route Ive mapped so far:


I can add routes if you guys find more interesting trails and passes nearby (I love the looks of poughkeepsie for example). This is all preliminary, I just wanna get a base down so everyone can kinda build off of it. This was extremely overwhelming frankly but Im glad I wrapped my head around this trip early on so we can really prep for a great legendary bucket list trip.

 

https://www.trailsoffroad.com/trails

Check this site out. One of the CO guys turned me on to it.

https://www.tacomaworld.com/threads/colorado-b-s-thread.131441/page-6845#post-16640712

Good place to ask questions. CO peeps are super nice.

Lots of good CO threads.

 

Your going to love it out there. I really want to start making a trip out West each summer. Gotta find out where I need to move.

 

me too!! I hear the AZ guys are very welcoming

 

Looks awesome. There are TONS of places to camp around Engineer. It's all national forest so you can pretty much pull over wherever and camp.

 

Awesome so we could probably go down engineer for like an hour, camp, and take off for the rest of engineer and poughkeepsie and maybe imogene the next day since engineer takes 5 hours, poughkeepsie takes about 3 and imogene takes 3. I also just found this 160 mile trail connecting montrose and moab, which sounds great if we wanna spend as much time off highways as possible. Do you know anything about that? It looks like its just dirt roads really.
Im planning too much too soon hahaha

 

Hell yes! Awesome plan Jim. I dig it so far. Need to examine it closer when I have more time (too much shit going on right now) but from a quick glance I'm into it

 

Yeah man your plan looks good. I really want to go on this trip! Every time I see something new about it, it makes me wanna go more and more. Hopefully it will all work out for me to go

 

Yeah for sure. Camping an hour into Engineer should be easy.

I haven't heard of the Rimrocker until just now. Looks cool!

 

How does everyone feel about stopping by Great Sand Dunes National Park?

 

this is in southern Colorado?

 

I wanted to hit that but didn't have time.

 

That place looks unreal in the pictures I've seen. Crazy dunes with mountains in the background... Don't typically see those terrains together