Chinaman’s

Gulch

‘06

After a picture perfect drive over Kenosha and Red Hill passes we saw the familiar Colligate Peaks as we rounded the final set of turns.  Always majestic, Mt Princeton was a familiar site just to the West or our destination.  This year had a much unexpected beginning to the trail.   There was a rather large Sippie Hole at the entrance of the trail.  It was very deep with only one problem…a MASSIVE hole on the right and dry ground on the left.  Yes, it was too much temptation for the Cole man to resist.  He barreled through it only slowing down enough to realize that his Jeep was completely leaned over only being held up by the mud riding up against his sheet metal!  That made for some great action shots, having the digital camera ready to snap got the shot, just at the right moment!  After airing down it was business as usual except for one thing…  All the local news channels predicted foggy and cool conditions for the mountains, hell no…It was hot like nobodys business!  It must have gotten up to 80 degrees or so, and of course Tagimo and myself dressed for the cool weather busting out our sweat shirts, jeans and heavy socks!  Cruising at ½ mile per hour with headers under foot tends to warm one up rather quickly!  Needless to say we enjoyed the nice warm conditions…  On the center section of the trail, Cole decided to take the Jeepster up the stair step and found out that he missed the clearance of his 35’s!  His belly pan hung him up, but not for long thanks to the brawn of our own Uncle Warn!  Yes, Cole did earn an “UNCLE WARN SAVED MY ASS” sticker!  Looked good on the back of his Jeep too!  The rest of the trail was very fun negotiating the boulder fields and rock formations!  Catch ya on the next one!                                         Chris…