Patrol 14 wanted to get out, but where
can you go when the mountains are snowed in?
We had a few choices, we could just go play in the snow, which meant a
lot of digging; OR, we could find trails at lower elevations. Well, we decided to head to the gulches, lower
elevations, and not difficult trails; and IF we did run into snow, any day
away from the city can’t be bad. We met
at the Deckers store and headed down to the trail head about 9:30 on
Saturday. Once we were off the highway, we found a nice wide spot near the trail head to air down.
Our goal for the day was to run Metberry and Longwater Gulches. If you have never been to the gulches, home of the Hayman
fire, it is worth a trip to see the devastation that was left by some foolish
human being. We encountered a number of
downed trees across the trails. Of course, we took the time to remove these from
the trails and placed them along the trailside to discourage the ATV’s in the area
from going off-trail. I think we will continue to see lots of trees across the roads in this area since the fire was in 2002, and
many of the trees in that area are now starting to fall due to rot. In fact, a tree feel across the trail in the time between when we headed down the trail and returned to the trailhead.
Even though temps were
in the 50’s and there was very little snow in the area, the river was covered with a significant amount of ice.
A typical Patrol 14 tradition are Hot Dogs on Gary
Boudreau’s grill. Of course, what goes
better on a Jeep run and a beautiful day than Hot Dogs, Chips and cookies? Thanks, as always, to Gary for bringing along the BBQ unit and grilling those
dogs. Sweet treats were also plentiful.
Our group descended the one descent obstacle for the
day. Of course, this isn’t extremely
difficult. It looked a lot more intimidating than it actually was. In my opinion, coming up the rock was a lot
more fun.
It was a great day to get out and enjoy some mid-winter wheeling.