It rained just for a few hours on Friday afternoon but that moved on out and great weather followed for the next 2 days, we really got lucky on that considering just how wet and green everything is up there right now.
Not wanting to cut his rear quarters quite yet Bryanut, his wife Joleen (spelling?) and their two kids split up into My Bronco and Matts Fullsize to ride along. We headed off to the trail head at 8am as we have heard the trail can get quite crowded but it turned out to be pretty light that day and we never really had to wait.
We climbed the beginning of the trail without an issue taking in the blue skies and incredible scenery, everything was quite wet which provided us with a few challenges here and there and made it nice and cool.
Everyone made it across French Creek without much of an issue however Moneypit made it across the creek then started to battle his newly rebuilt hydroboost which seemed to be locking his rear wheels when he was turning.. which as you can imagine was very frustrating and limiting his crawling abilities. We had to throw some line to get him around the big boulder on the up hill side and off we went to the next obstacle.
I have heard allot about the giant tree root however I didn't even realize we went by that section until later on in the trail ride. Apparently the route we took is new and although slightly challenging and off camber it turned out to be pretty straight forward and wasn't an issue, looking back thats kind of a bummer.
We continued on taking in the views and great weather up to Holy Cross City and parked to have lunch and wait for the Pueblo/Colorado Springs group to show up and watch them play a bit on Cleveland Rock.
Everything they say about Cleveland Rock is true.. its pretty impressive. The puddles of oil and marks across the face of the rock tells the tail of many many tip overs, rolls and breakdowns. Two built rigs attempted the climb and with some clever spotting one did eventually make it.
After the entertainment we headed back down, crossed french creek without an issue passing a few of Jeeps and Yotas here and there. A bit of a drizzle here and that opened to up to blue skies and we exited the trail to gather firewood and enjoy the rest of the afternoon in the Holy Cross Wilderness.
Everyone made it down without too much carnage, lots of new scrapes and scratches on bumpers and diffs, I lost my centering pin again but had a spare that I replaced at camp that evening also bent my tie rod… again not enough to replace and drove home without issue. Matt bent a tie rod end but again didn't really cause any problems on the trail or on the way home, all in all I would say a pretty successful trail run.
I would like to give a great big thanks to everyone and especially Doug and Sarah who graciously allowed us to have a few meals with them under their canopy and shared their grill with us tent folk! I think good times were had by all and would love to put together another trip perhaps later in the season and get a few more rigs up there.
I have a few more photos from Sundays little outting Matt and I did as we decided to go up and over Mosquito pass from Leadville to FairPlay and down 285 to home, what a beautiful drive!
I know a ton of photos were taken along the way so please go
and post em, as I was driving I don't have many but I will post up what I do have below. Thanks again everyone was fun!And now a rabbit.
