Colorado Trip June 28th - July 5th

Update: Heading west June 27th, should be in CO June 28th - July 5th

Trying to plan a vacation to Denver area, been a bit since I've been out that way. Going to drive this time from So IL, about a 14 hour drive.

Few questions/need advice.

Any decent "beginner" trails to run that you guys would recommend ? Turd Gen with no lift right now, and don't think I'll get one purchased before then (using coil/uca $$ for trip instead) so the truck is stock except wheels and 265/70's. This has to make the 14 hour drive back home haha.

Any camping areas that you would recommend ? Trying to only do the "city thing" for a day or two to see a ballgame and what not with the rest of the trip spent doing outdoor activities.

Thanks guys !

 

With the snowpack this year, you're not going to find very much high altitude stuff open that early, and the snow melt may make it muddy enough down low you'll get hit with mud closures. A lot of forest service gates won't even open normally till June 15th.

I'd start by looking around Idaho Springs/Central City/Empire area.

 

Awesome. May need to move this vacation back then into June

 

@penadam I take it that the trail statuses are not very accurate on the TrailsOffroad map ???

 

Are there any in particular you're looking at? Just scrolling through some northwest of Denver/Boulder things look fairly on to me. There's some nuance to the status though. Some of those are just roads. Some like Rollins East are technically open and you may be able to get some distance down them before running into impassable snow - it's open until mile 12 and is popular for snow bashing runs, but that doesn't mean every vehicle can get to mile 12. The seasonal closures are just that, scheduled by the forest service, and you can see what those are based on the MVUMs and various district road status pages like https://www.fs.usda.gov/detail/arp/recreation/?cid=stelprdb5339508 The last week of May is right in that window of when some things typically open or are opened, but it depends on weather and as mentioned we've had a lot of snow this winter.

 

I was actually trying to use TrailsOffroad to plan out some routes since it will show a few pictures and then cross referencing it to the MVUMs to make sure what vehicles were allowed. Most of the lower elevation trails appeared to be open. There were a few that were shown as impassable but they were also rated as more difficult.

I'll have to stick to pretty mild trails, so if you have any that you would recommend that would be great. NW or SW of Denver will be the areas i try unless i find that i need to go further SW to run more open trails. I'll have a set of Icon COs put on before then, so nothing to extreme. HAVE to be able to make that 14 hour drive home.

I appreciate both of you guy's input @acidchylde @penadam

 

We recently made a new page that is more focused on crowd-sourced info. Hope this helps when you come out this way.

https://www.trailsoffroad.com/states/CO/high-country

 

Thanks !! I'll definitely look into that.

 

I don't do a lot down that way, so the Denver crowd would have better, more specific suggestions. I know there have been a couple recent runs already. Might help asking in the BS thread, as a number of people tend to not come out of the stickied threads all that often.

Going after Bushducks now eh? I was going to point him there earlier but isn't a lot of info just yet and it's mostly more remote things. Definitely a good and logical feature to add. Do the posts on that new page link from the trail pages? Like so you can be looking at a trail page and see 'current' crowd sourced status reports if any? Would be cool to have a sort of 'status feed' on the trail pages. It's interesting that Rollins is marked passable when the comment says people stuck barely in - as I said in the earlier post, status words can be very nuanced. (Not to derail this guy's thread too much.)

 

We have always been big fans of their site. They have some data we don't have, we have some data they dont have. I hope people can use both resources to know when the trails are ready for use.

No not yet, but that could be coded in pretty quickly. Thanks for the suggestion!

 

Snow forecast tonight and tomorrow.

 

Yea I just saw that

 

Dug through my funtreks guide books looking for easier trails with "Best time of year" of May or June. Here's a list you might want to check out. Note that not all are what would be considered offroad trails, but there typically something cool to see (ghost town, old mine, etc...)

Boreas pass - Como to Breckenridge - easy
Geneva Creek - Off highway 285 - easy
Rampart range - CO springs area - easy to moderate. Check on mud season closure
Phantom creek, Signal Butte - Woodland park area - easy
Shelf Road, Phanton Canyon - Canon City - easy
Gordon Gulch - Nederland - easy, with one hard section that can be bypassed
Switzerland Trail - Nederland - easy
Nevadaville Loop - Central City - easy

 

Thanks bud ! This will definitely help

 

Mount Herman Rd. Is an easy road/trail to access Rampart Range Rd. Nice views and there are a couple small spurs that offer a chance to flex out a stock rig. I imagine if you hit it in the middle of the week you could camp without too much trouble.

 

Well after seeing more snow coming in next week, and the advice of a few on here, I'm forced to postpone the trip. Hopefully be able to make it out end of June/early July.

 

I’m actually doing this same trip but I leave tomorrow morning. From Aurora, IL here. Would’ve been sweet to ride out together. Have fun on your trip

 

Dang. That would have been. I ended up pushing it back until further notice. Hopefully late June. Let me know how it goes !!

 

I'll just leave this hear:

https://kdvr.com/2019/05/21/colorado-snowfall-totals-from-may-20-21-storm/

 

Yeeeep, saw the videos of the airport last night hahah