Expedition 2009 - Rocky Mountains

[Backwoods Rambler]

Rocky Mountains Overland 2009

I thought I'd go ahead and start this as a trip report since I'm leaving tomorrow morning and all of the planning is done already - Mods can move it if they feel inclined.

Me and a couple of good friends are heading on what, for us, will be an Epic trip through the Rockies; the first of many such trips if all goes well. This is the trip that has caused me to bail on several other wheeling trips, which sucks, but hopefully it will be worth it in the long run and all the prepping I've been doing for this trip will also get me through many future wheeling trips.

After 2 years of preperation and planning; our objective is to travel from approximately Wyoming -to- New Mexico through the Colorado Rockies using as many 4x4 trails and vague map trails as possible. As of now we're estimating about 50 miles of pavement on this 700 mile adventure......it should be very interesting. In keeping with the spirit of "The Journey, not the Destination" we're not racing to the finish line. If we make it great! If not, we'll just pick up where we left of next time and enjoy the adventure and time together while we're in the moment.

We're not simply following the divide either, we've gone to some effort to include as many historic and scenic areas as we can while taking the road less traveled. We will surely miss a lot of what Colorado has to offer, but hey, there's always next time right?

Here is a couple images of our intended route. I know they are vague, but when you're covering this much terrain, it's just the way it is.

The line is pink is our route:

Here the line in yellow is our route:

For those with GPS capabilities who wish to get a better idea of route:

Here's the Google Earth route file:
Expedition2009rockies.gdb

Here's the Mapsource route file:
Expedition2009rockies.gpx

I'll follow-up in a WEEK!! :victory:

I'd like to take a minute to thank the many members of this board who have posted up thier inspiring trip reports, Adventures & Expeditions alike, it truely kept the dream alive for me!

 

[mmcan]

Subscribing!

Good Luck to you and your father.

 

[Backwoods Rambler]

Well, I'm back!

I expected the trip to take 8 days, but apparently this trip would likely take more like 14 days. We did not complete the route, but we had a great time anyway and changed the route a bit to include some additional must do Colorado trails.

Full Trip Report to come.

 

[Backwoods Rambler]

Since I’m not great with words, I’ll let the pictures do the talking with minor narrative when it seems necessary…..

Day 1- Livermore (Greeley really) –to- Green Ridge Trail


Getting started…..the rigs are looking clean for now…

I hope the weather cooperates…..did anyone check the forecast??

We topped off fuel at the Village at Red Feather Lakes

Finally dirt road!

NOTE: In my first post I estimated 50 miles of pavement….boy was I wrong! Even after getting on dirt, which is where the trip technically started; we topped 50 miles before the 2nd day. There were many sections of the route that I thought would be dirt based off of satellite imagery and the fact that the section was a “forest road”. A great example of that is FR105 along the Frying Pan River from Ruedi Reservoir; its paved all the way from FR400 where we exited the Sawatch Range.

Finally some real trail. This is the start of the popular Green Ridge Trail from the Red Feather Lakes side.

Over half of the trail consists of tall Pines and lots of ground shrubs

And then it starts to hail

Day one was easily in the low 50’s and of course we were all wearing shorts and short sleeve shirts. I was even in sandals until about 6pm!

Then we hit our first nasty mud pit……

…….. luckily it was our last one also. All others we crossed easily.


After much effort Jeremy took the winch.

Now, we’re not “mudders” but Denis sure knew how to get through! He really showed us “young guys” how it’s done!

No shots of me going through (perhaps Denis or Jeremy have some) but I took a winch straight away since we had already been at “The Pit” for the better part of an hour.

Larimer Lake / First Camp

 

[Backwoods Rambler]

Day 2- Green Ridge Trail –to- Gore Range/Slough Grass Reservoir

We made our way through the remainder of the Green Ridge Trail the next morning. Taking Hwy 14 to Gould, then south on 21RD / FR740

Through Teller City…..

Which seemed to only consist of this old cabin

There was more to it, but it was all closed off due to logging operations for clearing out Pine Beetle kill I believe.

This is all I could find about Teller City: http://www.ghosttowns.com/states/co/tellercity.html

http://www.passportintime.com/summaries/01/co01_mb-r_tellercity.html

We hit some smooth graded dirt road to finish out this section of the trip to Old Homestead

Along Hwy 125 we came upon a very unique rock formation

For those who haven’t seen the effects of the Pine Beetle on Rocky Mountain Forests, this is what you see more of as you begin to enter the Granby area.

I didn’t get many pictures of this area and the ones I did get aren’t that great due to the large areas of dead Pine.

We fueled up and continued from Granby to Kremmling, where we headed south into the Gore Range. The scenery began to get much more dramatic.

Our shadows were getting long, so we began looking for camp. It turns out much of the area that we thought would be Nat’l forest was private land, so we got to camp a bit later than expected.

We had a goal of camping near water every night. It turns out that names can be deceiving when looking for water.

Here is Slough Grass Reservoir; well the best shot I have of it, note there’s no water to be seen.

I know what Slough means now: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slough_(wetland)

 

[Backwoods Rambler]

Day 3- Gore Range/Slough Grass Res. –to- Red Table Mountains/ Sylvan Lake area

If I had one dream for this trip it was to find that one trail that is truly less traveled. To say that I expected to find it would be laughable, but I it appears that we just might have based on the condition of the trail and the fact that I’ve never heard reference to it online anywhere. As a matter of fact, when planning the route, this is the one area that I thought we’d end up turning around in a lot because all of the roads seemed so vague when I was researching them. Also, I’ve been wheeling the Northern Colorado area since 1999 and consider myself pretty familiar with trails in the area and I’ve never heard of this network.

The three of us jokingly referred to the route as the JDJ trail, but I thought I’d get a bit more serious about a name for it, so without further ado, I’m calling it “The Piney Ridge Trail”. Now, I wouldn’t make such a big deal about this trail if it was just some lame network of forest roads. It’s not particularly challenging, perhaps for a stock rig, but it’s the scenery that gives this trail its appeal. For ratings, we all agreed that, out of 10 total; it gets a 4 for difficulty and a 7 for scenery. I gave it a 10 for cool factor, simply because when traveling this route, you get the distinct feeling that you’re really out in the deep woods.

Now, I could be wrong about all of this and it’s a common trail. If so, that’s fine. I enjoyed the trail no matter what it’s called. If you know something I don’t, please feel free to let me know.

The pics of course probably won’t convey any of this, but here they are anyway:

One of many great views from Piney Ridge Trail

Trail surface

Another view from Piney Ridge Trail

More trail surface

The trail starts to climb out of the woods into high meadows, but not before a nice Aspen Grove

 

[Backwoods Rambler]

Day 3- Continued....

Cresting the saddle near the High Trail Gulch Spring

Small Pano near the top

Coming down the open meadow its difficult, but not impossible, to see the trail; even when you’re actually on the trail.

It should go without saying, but I think it’s always worth stating: This is no place to be going off trail!

Out of the woods and into the lower part of the trail.

Just after the descent in the pic above, you quickly learn that the trail to the left is no longer for motorized use. The trail to the right is for motorized use, including Jeeps, etc., but if you’re referencing a Topo map, you’ll see that the trail loops back the way you came; however if you push forward you will find a route that vaguely follows the path I’ve shown in the image below.

Note the Red X and the Green arrow, showing an approximation of the proper route.

I say approximate because my route, for the first few days, got deleted and of course this was part of that. But if you look at this area on Google Earth, you can vaguely see the route I’m referring to.


That’s all of the pics from this route. I was so unsure if we’d make it out to State Bridge that I didn’t think to take any more.

We made out way to Gypsum (I had to get to the Costco for more camera memory (700+ pics for this trip!) and in the parking lot I spotted a Sportsmobile

On the way to the next campsite we took a wrong turn just off the main road South of Eagle

It looked like an interesting route, but No Trespassing was posted…bummer

We passed Sylvan Lake….

…..and made our way to the Red Table Mountains for camp

 

[Backwoods Rambler]

day 3- Continued again....

Can you spot the Jeep?....LOL

Third camp

I was sleeping in the jeep each night. I didn’t get a shot of the setup, but it was the typical; remove front pass seat and built wood platform style. I used a 1” thick eggshell plus a 3” thick self inflating foam insulated camp mat. It was VERY comfy.

Trying to figure out manual settings on my camera and came up with this shot

Campfire again

 

[Backwoods Rambler]

Day 4- Red Table Mountains/Sylvan Lake area –to- Elk Mountains/Schofield Pass area

Leaving Red Table Mountains was mostly uneventful as far at the trail went, but the scenery started to get really fantastic.

On the trail again…

This happened no less than three times on the trip

Due to the relatively smooth gravel trails, we covered lots of terrain this day

and I mean lots of terrain….

Nice scenery all around of course

Then we came to Ruedi Reservoir and I was blown away!

Even though I thought this area would be gravel trail, the scenery more than made up for the pavement time

Honestly the pavement was nice after some long sections of bumpy gravel trail.

We made a detour to Carbondale to eat lunch at Garcia’s authentic Mexican Restaurant

 

[Backwoods Rambler]

Day 4- Continued

You place your order up front….

Then go around back to pay….

I had the Pupusa de carne with a Jarritos mandarina soda….it was really good!

Instead of heading back to Aspen towards Taylor pass, we strayed from the planned route for the first time. South to Marble, then onto Schofield pass after fueling up in Carbondale.

The pass was actually open, we called first.

Lizard Lake

Crystal River Powerhouse

We reached a campsite shortly after the town of Crystal. It was definitely time for roasting marshmallows!

 

[Backwoods Rambler]

Day 5- Elk Mountains/Schofield Pass area –to- Taylor Pass/Taylor Park

In the morning we started up Schofield pass. Apparently it’s very dangerous….

…. we didn’t think so.

Apparently coming down after the river crossing is where it can get scary

A nice waterfall after the trail smooths out closer to the top

…..I added the sunset effect, it was actually around 11am when the pic was snapped.

Nice views near the flat top area prior to the summit.

Emerald Lake coming down the Crested Butte side

 

[Backwoods Rambler]

Day 5- Continued.....

We topped off fuel in Crested Butte and headed up Pearl Pass

Stopped for a lunch break

Finally getting to the rocks

Looking back from where we came

Where we’re headed

This trail now seems more dangerous than Schofield due to the sheer height of the dropped combined with the narrow shelf road.

Nice view from the shelf road on Pearl pass.

Waiting in the saddle below the pass for a group of ATVs to come through.

 

[Backwoods Rambler]

Day 5- Continued again.....

We finally head up and what do we see around the bend….

Luckily they knew to back up right away.

View coming down the Aspen side of Pearl

It’s a slow rocky trail coming down

After Pearl, we headed straight over to Taylor pass. There was some avalanche damage visible on the way up.

It quickly turned into a narrow shelf road, but that didn’t last long

At the top of Taylor pass

Pano from the top of Taylor Pass

Coming down Taylor pass got a bit trickier than the ride up

After a long day we finally made camp just after the end of the pass. There was a nice water feature on the river right next to camp.

As most of you probably know, having camp next to a river is very nice.

 

[Backwoods Rambler]

Day 6- Taylor Pass/ Taylor Park –to- Black Sage Pass RD/FR887

Heading out of Taylor Park means many miles of dusty dirt road. Keeping a distance between you and the driver ahead is important so that you’re not breathing a lot of dust.

Taylor Reservoir

The reservoir was ok, but it looks like the camping and surrounding mountains are the reason to go to this area, unless you have a boat or some other water craft.

Next up was Tin Cup

We stopped for an early lunch at Frenchy’s for an overpriced, but VERY good, bacon cheeseburger.

Denis & Jeremy shared a Tin Cup pie, they said it was really good. I'm very pickey about pie, so none on thier menu appealed to me, but I've heard that they're all very good.

From Tin Cup we headed south to Cumberland pass.

NOTE: Tin Cup pass is more fun, but we had all done it before, but we wanted to do Williams and for the route to work best, Cumberland pass made the most sense.

View from top of Cumberland pass

Heading down Cumberland you pass, what appear to be, some old mining ruins

We quickly found ourselves nearing the Alpine Tunnel road

Although you can’t see much of them when your driving over them, the Palisades are pretty amazing.

Here’s getting that perfect shot!

 

[Backwoods Rambler]

Day 6- Continued......

The Palisades

View looking out over the palisades

Stonework at the Alpine Tunnel Engine House

Old iron at the engine house; probably from the straps around a water tank

The elements are really taking their toll on this piece

Old railway steel

The station