Bill Moore - May 18

Patrol 14 made a trip up Bill Moore Lake on May 18th. Joining us on this run was Bill, Gary, Daryl and David, Sam, Jaime and Cecilia, Joe, CJ and Dan. The day started off fairly cool with brief snow showers on the way up to the trailhead and at the air-down area. After airing down, we headed up the trail. The trail was dry through the early switchbacks and the chute. At the top of the chute, we met some vehicles coming down. They indicated they did not make it very far and were giving up. As they indicated, shortly after the chute we ran into a lot of snow. Gary was taking the lead, and his YJ made excellent progress past the Miller Creek cut-off and up to the camp spot at which the trail turns right and goes up the hill. The snow varied between completely covering the trail for 100's of feet to brief drifts. Sam quickly discovered that it was necessary to air down in order to make it up through the snow drifts.

We were able to make it up to the camp site, but it was challenging and a slow climb at times. Near the campsite, there was a drift across the trail. We thought it would be too tempting to drive around this drift, creating an illegal bypass, so we built a small deterrent using some fallen trees. Please remember to "Stay the Trail."

After this work, we were all ready for some lunch and relaxing for a bit. After lunch, we decided to take a few tries of varying people attempting to make it up the hill. It proved to be more challenging than any of us were capable of overcoming, and CJ even became high centered and needed a tug to get back out of the snow.

After this "fun in the snow," we decided to head back down. As we were heading back down, the group decided to see how far up the Miller Creek trail we could get, and due to various people backing up and turning around, Daryl took the lead. Daryl was able to make some progress through a lot of pounding away at various drifts heading up, and the snow became pretty deep at times.

 

Surprisingly, the heavy JKU just kept pounding away at the snow and was eventually able to get to the clearing at the top. The entire group was able to make it up the trail without too many issues behind the JKU.

At the top, we all lined up to take a picture and enjoyed a break from the snow.

Without knowing what we might run into, we decided to continue down the trail towards Red Elephant and Empire loop. Unfortunately, it did not take long before we ran into another snow drift across the trail. 

This is a pretty gnarly snow drift, as the tree on the left side created a pretty deep hole off the top of the drift. At this point, it was getting pretty late into the afternoon, so we decided to head back down the mountain. On the way down, the trail was already starting to ice up, and we had a couple of issues. After some digging, we were able to get everyone down the mountain safely, aired up and headed back to town. Overall, it was a great day on the trail, but we want to remind everyone that there is a LOT of snow up there, and it is tempting to bypass some of these drifts. Please remember to ALWAYS "Stay the Trail!"

Pickle Gulch - April 27th

Patrol 14 decided to run Pickle Gulch and enjoy a day in the mountains. We all met at the Z Stop outside of Blackhawk about 9:30 on Saturday morning. Joining us on the run were Sam  (Elaine was out of commission), Daryl (RoxeAn was busy with Prom stuff), Gary and Trudy, David and Kim, Harold and Sandy, and the trip leader, Bill and his partner Cheryl. Additionally, we had Dan Ayriss as our guest. Gary and Bill were thrilled to have Dan's company because he drives a YJ. Once everyone was at the meeting spot, we headed to the trailhead via Black Hawk and Central City with Bill leading the run and Daryl pulling up the rear. We stopped to air down at the trailhead.

As we were airing down a lone CJ7 was coming off the trail. He stopped to chat with us and asked if he could join us since he was relatively new to four wheeling and was unsure about making the run alone. Of course, we said yes, and we threw him in the middle behind Dave and Kim. We soon discovered that his experience was indeed very limited and he had not aired down near enough to make the climb up the first obstacle.

Once we got him up that first obstacle, we pulled off the trail and got Brandon, our guest, aired down to 20 psi.  He was a little nervous about going any lower than that so we thought we'd try that. We journeyed on up the trail and then stopped at the old cabin. We met up with a nicely built XJ and a Toyota pickup. They headed up the trail and the rest of us took a few photos and enjoyed the scenery from the cabin.

Not long after, our group got back in our Jeeps and headed up the trail to see what happened to the XJ and the Toyota.  They had encountered deeper snow and were having some difficulties.  The Toyota decided to turn around, and they headed back down the trail towards the trailhead. While we were waiting for them to get turned around, an ATV on tracks came down from the top of Pickle Gulch.  He informed us that there were two XJ's that were stuck pretty bad and were off the trail. He said they were having great difficulties trying to recover. Gary and Daryl decided to walk ahead and scope out the situation. When they got to the XJ's, Gary chatted with them briefly and asked if they would like some help. For whatever reason, from what Gary and Daryl had been able to surmise, they had little interest in our help.

As the trip leader, I decided that we would stop a little further back down the trail, grill our delicious hot dogs, and enjoy the sunshine.  We had offered help and if they were not inclined to take that help, we had no intention of ruining our day of wheeling. After lunch, Daryl had a prior event he needed to get home to, so he took off down the mountain. Sam took a walk up to check on the XJ boys. By now (about an hour later), they realized that some help would be a nice thing to have. Sam reported back to the group. Of course being MHJC 14'ers, we decided to go try our best to get the fellas out of their bind. It turned out that getting up the trail to the XJ's was a bit of a challenge, but we did make it up there with Harold, Dan and Gary's Jeeps. One of the XJ's had freed himself; however, he was pointed up the trail and backing down past his partner was going to be almost impossible without getting stuck again. We encouraged him to try to turn around while we tried to winch out the black XJ which was off the side of the trail and in extremely deep snow. We hooked up the two Jeeps that had decent access to the stuck XJ. One Jeep was pulling back and one Jeep was pulling across the trail. Along with some shoveling and about 45 minutes of rigging and re-rigging, we were able to free the black XJ. Once we had the XJ's free, we returned to pick up our ladies, load up our gear, and head down. While loading up, the XJ's passed us, waved, and said a simple "thanks". About halfway down the trail, one of the XJ's busted his front drive shaft and was stuck on the trail. We patiently waited, offered some assistance, and got them up and running.
They thanked us and headed home. When we got to the trailhead, we gave thought to exploring further or airing up and going home. Sam and Dan headed home.The rest of us decided to explore further trails in that area. Unfortunately, at every direction we turned we encountered snow. About 4:30, we decided to head into Georgetown and stop at Beau Jo's and have some delicious pizza. It was a great day to be on the trail.

Spring is upon us and we are all anxious to go wheeling. This was a great start to another great upcoming summer of four wheeling with great friends.