Umm, I haven't heard yours yet??
Lol, Alright, alright.... Gather 'round, I have a story to tell..
So this is how it went down, all names have not been changed to protect the guilty, no animals were harmed, and all that...
Heather and I left on Friday night after work, wondering if the rain was going to catch up with us. I think for the most part we were out running it or skirting around it. We decided to take 67 through Deckers and then 285 North to Evergreen. I wanted to take Guanella Pass, but we needed some food, and I didn't feel like shooting anything. The drive out was awesome, my Cherokee loaded with camp supplies, the stormy sky, awesome folk music from my passenger seat DJ, and a Chihuahua in my lap keeping me warm. Doesn't get any better than that.
We were headed for Spring Creek, then up the Peak to Peak Highway via Central City to Nederland and then on up to Middle St Vrain trail. Being a little nomadic, my wife and I enjoy the road as much as the trail. We enjoyed every minute and took our time. Having your best friend with you on these trips is a blessing. We made it to Idaho Falls and gassed up at the normal Shell station while I figured out where the trailhead was. We made it to the trail and aired down about 8:30 Friday night just as the sun was setting down. I was going to run up to the harder gatekeeper obstacle first and walk it to see how bad it had become in the years since I was last on this trail, if it was too bad, the plan was to take the bypass. Driving up the shelf road in the dark on on unfamiliar trail with all the LED lights on was exhilarating. Fortunately, the obstacle has gotten easier, mostly because the giant rock that tore Matt's valve stem off all those years ago has been kicked to the side. Weighted down, I still had to keep to the right to miss a giant hole, dropped on the rock slider, and got really close to losing my passenger tail light. [I lost this tail light later anyway, and had I know, I would have rather taken it out myself on this obstacle] We cleared that and made our way up the trail, hopefully to a nice campsite. After a long rocky section of trails, we made it to the place where it looked like we would find a campsite. The place is pretty torn up, but we managed to find a cool spot in the grass, with the sounds of the river in the background, next to an old mining building foundation-- that we didn't even know was there until the morning. We set up our new Coleman Instatent, and let me tell you... its pretty dang instant. Problem was, in setting it up in the back yard on a test run, I seemed to have misplaced the stakes. [found those later in the yard] We used all the screwdrivers I had to stake the tent down, and now I'm thinking about buying a whole lot of cheapo screwdrivers because they work so dang well.. haha. The wife and dogs crashed out on me as soon as the sleeping gear was available, I guess I wasn't surprised, but I was still amped up about making it through the gatekeeper. Went to bed anyway and honestly, fell asleep pretty quick.
Waking up and having coffee by the fire in the forest is the best thing ever. I wish I could do it every morning. Heather slept in for a while, the doggies and I took in the scenery in silence, because we had the place to ourselves. After Heather got up and we made breakfast, we folded up camp and headed up the trail. Some moron did something with the official trail sign and it was MIA, so it took us a while to even find the way up. We were eventually joined by a group of Jeeps and a very large tire shod ATV. I was feeling good about them being all on 33" tires, thought I would be the only one crazy enough to try that. The ATV guy was pretty entertaining to watch, I think I saw him almost turn that thing over on himself 3 times. I was in the lead at the rock garden, staring ahead and was laughing at the fact that the Charles Wells book ranks Iron Chest harder than this trail. We fought like heck to get through that rock garden, it's dang tough. I had to stack rocks, tweaked my lower shock mount, take most of the paint off my sliders, and beat my Ford 8.8 to death getting through there. Even had to chainsaw a tree off the trail to get through. Somewhere in the middle of it all, one of the YJ's got turtled on the rocks, we got tired of waiting and headed up. At the top we found an open field overlooking the mountains and grilled a little pizza. We were at the crossing of Saxon Mountain and Spring Creek, thinking about taking Saxon Mountain down, but thinking the snow was too much. The strangest thing about all that was that everyone that passed through seemed stop and hang out with us. A guy and his son on a snow packed UTV confirmed that the snow was too deep to make the trip down Saxon to Georgetown. We met some cool people out there.
The trip back to Idaho Falls was pretty uneventful, had a bump stop break a screw and fall out of it's mount. Had to pull up on a rock and force it back in with a pair of channel locks. We enjoyed all the waterfalls on the way down to I70, got lost in Central City, turned around near Yankee hill, and found our way on to the Peak to Peak Highway. Getting into the campgrounds before Middle St Vrain, I was getting excited again....until we got to the huge gate with a Forest Service truck parked next to it. We were informed that the trail was closed due to an excessive snow year, that resulted in flooding, and resulted in the road being closed. First time I got angry the whole trip. I firmly believe that all gates should be open after June 1.... no exceptions. Travel at your own risk. Oh well. They said it might open in July, and I guess Red Cone is scheduled to open July 4th. Maybe I'll get back.
We had to divert to The IronClads and Plane crash trails. I guess this wasn't a horrible thing-- not my favorite trail, and hard to find flat camping-- but it would have to work. We headed up trail 105 out of the camp area, and stopped to air down. Heather was driving, that made it easy for me to get out and put on the deflators. I heard an ATV coming and asked her to pull over a little bit, but the shelf road was narrow so there wasn't much room. A guy on an ATV tried to get around us, drove up on my tire and rim, then hit my rear quarter panel with his mud flap, and drove off. What? Really?? I only noticed after he was gone that he had broken my valve stem off and the deflator was laying on the ground...
THEN, another group of ATV's came by and a guy clipped my Cherokee and broke my tail light out. Really??? Crazy.. He at least stopped to apologize, but I was so upset and worried about the valve stem, I told him to just go on. Being as my rear tire carrier is has still not arrived, I had no spare tire-- BUT, I have heard a crazy story that you can install a valve stem from the outside if you work it carefully with a flat screwdriver... and I did have extra valve stems. It would have to work, because I only had one jack, and that would hold up the rig, I would need another jack if I was to break the bead on the tire. We limped back to the campground and on the flat concrete where I had to unload
everything to get to the jack [always the way
that goes]. Once the tire was off, I worked the broken stem backward into the rim, gave it a couple whacks with the blunt end of the screwdriver, and it fell inside the rim. Got out the new stem, pulled my transmission dipstick and used a little ATF for lube, and went to work. I'll be damned if it didn't take me more that 15 minutes to insert that new valve stem into my rim. It was actually pretty easy. Fired up the Viair and put some air in the tire, then continued about our business. One of my favorite trail fixes ever.
We camped up in the Iron Clads that night. There were campers everywhere, and a Nissan club that was taking up quite a lot of space. we drove way up the trail thinking we most likely wouldn't find a spot. After just about giving up, and resolving to make something work, I stopped to water a tree and walked into the best campsite we saw all weekend. Perfect. I was off the trail and the fire ring had two inches of pine straw in it, signifying that it had been dormant for a while. The rain set in so we got up camp and strung a tarp up in the trees. We made dinner, listened to the rain, had a few drinks, and threw a "Funky Flames" rainbow colors fire packet into the fire. Very nice. Happy to say the new Instatent is waterproof. Nothing sucks worse than a wet night trying to sleep. More coffee by the fire in the morning, and sadly, camp was broken down and we headed back to civilization.
We did take the Peak to Peak highway back and seemingly entered ourselves in a bike race. That was pretty entertaining watching them get rained on and beaten with sporadic hail. Haha. That's what they get for jamming up traffic, never stopping at stop signs, and blocking up the roads all the time....
The lighting show was pretty awesome too.
Next up.... Yellowstone!!!
