Wisconsin area events- COMING SOON! Lower Wisconsin River kayak camping trip! July 25-27

I was there last July. The trail is pretty much a steep, gravel road. There is nothing technical or difficult, unless you're afraid of heights. Then it will be thrilling. I didn't see anybody camping on the trail. I'd recommend going to Moab instead, but this time of year Moab is intolerable. Temps in the 110*+ range. BTDT.

 

I stayed at a campsite at the state Park near Ridgway. It’s pretty close to Ouray where the trail head to Imogene, Engineer, and several other cool trails. Going to engineer starting at Ouray will take you through Mineral Creek trail, which is technical in spots and you’d likely drag something if not lifted. Not sure if there’s an easier way to get to Engineer.

If you do Engineer, decide before hand if you’re going up and over the pass to the town on the other side. It takes a long time to get there, and a long time to get back. And the boring parts of the trail are super slow traveling over jagged football size rocks. It wasn’t paved with gravel…it was long-ass sections of pure jagged rocks. Plan accordingly. Our lack of planning led us to being forced to drive over Cinnamon Pass at night, because highway closures meant we did not have any paved roads options to get back to ridgway.

North of ridgway is a National Forest that has lots of free trail side spots for camping. But it’s maybe an hour two hours from ridgway to get to them.

By the way, I went with a buddy that used to live out there for 5 years or so. Lived in ridgeway and worked in Teluride. He even commuted to work a time or two by taking Engineer pass lol.

 

Been on and off cause work is crazy and the missus is back at work. I'm amazed I get time to look at my phone between my toddler and 4 month old.


With that being said, did I miss something?

Seeing a beer garden meet up for July 1st?

 

A little over a week is a good amount of time I think.

In case you are looking for a beautiful area to camp, this is the area where I stayed one night.


On the map you’ll see Ridgway on the left, and slightly north of the town I circled Hwy 10. I took Hwy 10 into the Uncompahgre National Forest. You can see two forest roads circled on the map, but I didn’t stay at those. I went a little further northwest near the Silverjack lake.

Below are some NF roads that are circled on this map where I explored a little bit and found a nice campsite. Each dot along the roads is a campsite. I think I stayed on the little 861.1B offshoot. There are also sites with gorgeous views near the Jackson Guard station.



Keep in mind that they all look close to Ridgway, but it takes a good hour to get to Ridgeway from the camp site I was at. Most of it is on well-graded smooth dirt/gravel roads, but there are a lot of gravel roads near the camping area that are made of jagged/sharp football sized chunks of granite. You have to go a slow on these sections to keep from getting flats. To give you an example, it took 25 min to get from my campsite to the guardshack on the map. Once you get to ridgway, it’s about another hour to get to the Imogene trailhead in Ouray.

Did I mention to make sure you have a good spare? There was a guy that pulled in near my site in the evening with a flat tire (load C, K02). In the morning, he had another flat tire from a slow leak. Could have been from not being careful with his tires on the chunky roads.


edit: corrected some navigational advice mistakes

 

I didn't think a certification was needed for a chainsaw....where does one even aquire a chainsaw certificate?

A shipping lacky told me I needed to be certified to use a table saw, one time, but I think they told that to him so he wouldn't touch it. lol

 

@SJ87

This pic shows the whole Alpine loop, which is Ouray to Engineer pass, to Lake City then back over cinammon pass to Ouray.

If you take your time, and nothing goes wrong, I think you can do the alpine loop in about 12 hours.

If you hate your truck you can do it probabky do it in less time. I say that because the section from Engineer to Lake City is very chunky football sized granite blocks.

We ended up doing the Alpine loop, but only because we didn’t really plan. And because we had to stop for a while going up towards Engineer because I got carbon monoxide poisoned lol.

I mentioned on a previous post that it was nightfall when we got to Cinammon pass. At the top we considered our options…and we were worried about the terrain difficulty at night on the rest of the way to Ouray, so on the way back down, we bailed off the Alpine loop onto a “highway” that went to Silverton. It was well graded, wide, and safe….but more of the infernal granite blocks. It took us hours after Cinammon pass to reach silverton because there was a 12 mile portion where we could do about 4mph. Any faster and was gonna shake everything apart.

We left Ridgway in the morning around 10 am and got back to camp at 1:15am the next day.
It’s what you would call “stupid fun” lol.

 

its closed for this year due to road maintenance!

 

I’m a printer, I’m sure I can make a chainsaw cert easy enough.
Just saying.

 

Is Imogene closed as well?

 

Thanks but I don't do enough volunteering on federal and state lands to make it worth my while.

Turns out...a chainsaw cert. is a thing.

 

The main thing about it is don’t cut off important body parts. It hurts!

 

I've had 2 chainsaws for 20 years and have never heard of a certification. WTF? Let Darwin sort it out.

I drove a forklift 40 hrs a week for 8 yrs. and was never "certified".

 

If you get to retirement & still have 10 fingers, 10 toes, 2 arms & 2 legs should be cert. enough!

 

Yes!

 

New poll, y'all!

Just trying to get a general idea how many people are going to join me at the end of July for some paddling and shenanigans.

 

Check, check, check ,and check. What about brain cells?

 

If you've gotten that far you have some.

 

Who's all coming to Petrifying Springs next Tuesday?

I know @BookieBob is interested.

@sparkystaco ? @wi_taco ? @Camerasandcoffee ? @rubbersidedown? @WiscoPat ? @Aztec120 ?

Whoever else I missed in the S/E WI area?

Either way, looking forward to it!

 

Right now I'm a probably no. In the grocery business the week of the 4th is one of the top 4 big grocery shopping holidays and in IT we need to keep everything running smoothly. It also happens to be my week in the on-call rotation.

There's an outside chance I'll pop in. I've fielded on-call issues in a lot of places (Miller Park, on a boat, on the ice while fishing, on a bike, on a golf course, in multiple bars, at a funeral home... ) but never at a biergarten.

 

I'll be leaving for Alaska on Monday