Colorado Trip Reports

My journey on Sunday, 2/5:

From Bailey, I headed southeast down Wellington Lake Road to...you guessed it...Wellington Lake. There wasn't much snow, but there was definitely some ice in shaded areas that made hills a bit sketchy and gave me a chance to confirm that a) my lockers work, and b) lockers are ineffective when all 4 tires are on ice.



Then headed down into the Hayman fire area for roughly 20 miles through gorgeous but heart breaking views of thousands of acres of destroyed pine forest. There's a fair amount of pine, ash, and aspen starting to fill in.



Headed east toward the Cheesman Reservoir which is currently closed to public use until spring.



Hopped onto 126 and went east through Deckers, then picked up Cedar Mountain Road down by Westcreek.



I spent about and hour or so to drive about 15 miles through more of the Hayman fire area past Metberry Gulch, Longwater Gulch, and Hackett Gulch, which I'd like to hit in better weather.





At the next major intersection with Trail Creek Road, I turned left to back northeast and run what turned out to be another 4wd trail back up to Westcreek where I had started Cedar Mountain Road in the morning. I stopped taking pictures at that point, but this was even more fun than Cedar Mountain Road with several small water crossings and a fair amount of mud.

 

It was a good day away from the concrete jungle.

 

How far did you guys make it?

 

Write-up from today's outing:
https://www.tacomaworld.com/threads/alee891s-radiant-red-build-bs.415933/page-48#post-14393415

 

@Reh5108 @kashtyaatsi @Littles and I decided to do a little exploring of Pickle Gulch.

We froze our asses off at the meetup location due to the constant wind and headed west to the trailhead. Aired down, and began up the trail. There were tire tracks that were new so we figured we may see someone up the trail at some point.

A few hundred feet in, we came to the first obstacle. The tire marks did not proceed any farther than the hill climb and didn't make it very far down the bypass. We had a little fun playing on the ice. There was not much fresh snow, but just under the snow was a nice polished thick icy surface that we battled all day.





Not sure whats going on here...


HOVER MODE ENABLED







tURD




We used our recovery gear, plowed a lot of snow, but made it to the big clearing area with the fire pit in the middle.

@kashtyaatsi bombed up to the top of the trail... defying gravity at least once. But it was too far to walk to get pictures. He then bombed down... bouncing and sideways. It was pretty deep on the next climb and we decided to head down.

No major damage to any of the rigs other than some fairly hefty pin stripes from some overly touchy branches. Someone added more 'aerodynamic body lines' to the tailgate via a tree.

 

Moar turd...

 

My dogs are too lazy to engage hover mode

 

Here's my recap of the day at Pickle Gulch....We made it much further than I thought we would.

It was about 19 degrees when we started out this morning. We saw a few inches of fresh snow on the ground, but tracks had already been laid ahead of us as we headed onto the trail.

@Reh5108, @kashtyaatsi, @aero3685 were present along with a Subaru Outback who couldn't join us due to a flat tire.





We breezed past the first washout, which just had a light coating of snow on it. Then we hit the first major obstacle, an icy incline with a bypass that presented enough of a challenge to stop the trailblazers ahead of us. My nitto terra grapplers again proved to be terrible in the snow, and @Reh5108 took the lead and started breaking trail, showing his first gen superiority. After he got up, @kashtyaatsi blasted his way up as far as he could, and with a little tug made it the rest of the way. @aero3685 took a few tries at the hill which was now just ice, and decided to try the bypass. He wound up winching his way up the last section while I took a run on the main obstactle and winched up the last of it.





We fought hard for every 100 feet of trail. @Reh5108 snowbashed and winched his way through snow drifts ahead of us and we blasted through behind him.





@kashtyaatsi found a tree to push off of and continued working on his custom tailgate.



We hit a few sections with traction, but ruts got to full of snow up to at least 2 ft.






We made very slow progress and got to practice lots of recovery.





Finally we made it up to a small clearing. After we winched @kashtyaatsi through this last drift up to the clearing, we was too cool to photo shoot with us and bombed up the next hill. No proof the turd gen made up thus far.

 

This thread needs a bump!

Played a little in Buena Vista yesterday. I was not expecting dry and desert when I went out there!

I thought Kenosha should have some good snow contrast pictures.


OK, maybe closer to Buena Vista...


OK so there was no snow. But it was a beautiful day, then started getting windy as the snow started dumping on the mountains.



I wanted to get night pictures of these tunnels, killed some time by driving up to St Elmo since I remember it being photogenic. It was lightly snowing up there, but didnt even stop to take a picture of anything. Then back to the tunnels.



There were deer everywhere!
My closest interaction of the night.

 

cool tunnels...where'd you find those?

 

Looks like Gold Camp Road. I am guessing they came back to town above Colorado Springs.

 

very cool...haven't been down there yet..been wanting to for a while tho

 

They are right outside of Buena Vista. If you take Colorado blvd/st/something north out of downtown, it turns into 371, and they are maybe two miles north right after one of the entrances to four Mile.

 

again, another area i need to explore...that's one pocket i have yet to run through in that area

 

So that's not Gold Camp Road then?

 

Nope. Still old railway tunnels, but different part of the state. Right here actually:
https://www.google.com/maps/@38.8771821,-106.1456775,677m/data=!3m1!1e3?hl=en
It's kind of interesting that the Google street view lets you go right through them.

Also, for anyone looking for the Gold Camp ones:
https://www.google.com/maps/@38.731848,-105.0265325,503m/data=!3m1!1e3?hl=en
But apparently Google won't drive that road.

 

I had no idea about those tunnels in Buena Vista.

 

Thanks for that link. That's a cool road. I followed it up all the way to the river crossing that appears to be closed. Looks like the road follows the old railroad grade almost the entire way. Where is stops at the river you can see an old railroad bridge. I will have to go check that out soon.

I know right. Lived in this state my entire life and had no idea.

 

It's been a while, but I used to take 70 to 91 to 24 and then south to BV (or beyond) on a fairly regular basis. It was always interesting to watch for the old railroad grade all the way down from Leadville whenever the highway is close enough to the river or the view isn't blocked. And try to figure out which is the rail line and which the old stage road.

 

Did a bit of glamping this week down in Villanueva state park outside of Santa Fe, New Mexico. No exciting wheeling or anything like that, just pretty much right down I-25. Overall a good time even though the weather was crap. More, better, landscape pictures to come once I unpack the real camera.