San Juans 2005

  Since we weren’t able to run the Rubicon Trail this year, we really needed to choose a local substitute.  The obvious choice was to hit the San Juan’s in southwestern Colorado.  We departed Golden before breakfast knowing that we had lots of miles between our destination and us.  Traveling I-70 was uneventful with the exception of seeing a semi that had just plowed up a runaway truck ramp.  Gotta say, 4-wheeling is more my version of an adrenaline rush!  Our initial plan was to meet Brentas where he had camped overnight near Devil’s Punch Bowl.  We made it there slightly after noon, and met Brentagimo just to discover that the trial was still snowed in.  After some quick deliberation, we decided to head toward Ophir Pass to camp for the night.  After arriving near the area we looked for a suitable campsite and set up camp.  The Corona’s tasted awesome after a solid day of driving to get there!  We grilled steaks and shared some tall off road tales around the campfire.  The next morning we had a nice breakfast and headed out of camp toward Ophir pass.  The trail was smooth and dry making it easy for most SUV’s to negotiate.  The top had the usual 12 ft drifts that were cleared by one massive snow blower!  That’s quite a trip driving right down the middle of a snowdrift twice as tall as your rig!  At the bottom we played in the ice-cold lake of runoff!  Of course Brentagimo had to jump in just to say he did it twice!  Not the toughest of trails, but the ledge road brings the pucker factor to a 10 at times!  Next we proceeded to the town of Telluride.  We decided to stay in a condo that evening for a nice shower and a little comfort for a change.  The next morning we proceeded on our journey to Black Bear up to Bridal Vale Falls (the highest free falling waterfall in Colorado 324ft)!  Since it was snowed in, we had to run it from the bottom up as far as we could.  We later headed to the actual 4 Corners monument on reservation land seeing some cool Native American

Crafts. The next step was the jump back on the highway back toward Mt Antero near Buena Vista.  We encountered some road construction delaying us to the point of camping overnight breaking up the road trip.  Next morning we packed up camp and headed on our way.  We arrived at Mt Antero and began our climb.  Gotta say it was just as beautiful as we remember it!  The group camped at Baldwin Lake on the other side of the summit.  What a keeler time we had covering some the most beautiful country in the world!  (Need 2 weeks next time!)  Cheers!  Christopher…