Red Cone - Buena Vista - Pitkin - St. Elmo - Oil Pan Hole
| Join the Early CJ-5 folks for a week of jeeping in the grand mountains of
Colorado. Monday will be an on-its-own trail, Red Cone with a Webster
Pass return loop, while the remaining days will be a continuous loop of
trails - camping on the trail three nights. The start/end of the loop
would be the town of Nathrup, south of Buena Vista. The loop of trails will have new-to-me sights as well as putting a check on the ToDo list of Alpine Tunnel - the first tunnel bore through the Continental Divide in the U.S. The trails of the trip were a mix of easy to difficult. On the original Tin Cup pass trail (a now optional section) I ended up setting the jeep's oil pan onto a rock, giving a reasonable dent into the pan along with a drip of oil that would require non-emergency attention. I was not the only jeep with mechanical needs. One jeep, trailered from Minnesota, ran less than one mile of the first trail. It was an older CJ-5 with a newly installed LS motor. It looked nice and clean. It had a condition that seemed like fuel starvation. We spent some time diagnosing on the trail but in the end the owner limped it back to its trailer and he turned for home. A rather unfortunate issue - perhaps 1100 miles one way of travel for one mile of trail. I'll be curious to hear what the issue was. Minnesota is perhaps 1000 ft of elevation. At the spot it had issues we were at 10,100 ft. Possibly a factor? Another jeep, two and a half days into the trail, was making a loud noise from the drivetrain. In the end, rear differential pinion bearing failure. That jeep was left in the town of Pitkin (at a spot the general store's owner recommended) and the driver and passenger and belongings were spread to the other jeeps and they continued the trip and extra day+. When they were close to their tow vehicle they would drive to Pitkin to pickup the ailing jeep. Those folks are in the panhandle of Florida. I think there were eight jeeps to start and at the end five remained - two having significante mechanical issues while others could only join for a day or two. The weather for the trip was mixed. Temperatures were reasonable to a tad cool due to weather. We had rain here and there for much of the trip. Fortunately, rain held off when tents were being assembled and torn-down, though wet tents were common. While clouds can enhance a photo, staying dry would have been nice. At the alpine tunnel several side-by-side vehicles showed up - families - that didn't seem well dressed for the rain/sleet weather in the open vehicles they were in. Several of the jeeps ran open top or no doors but all of us came prepared for cool weather and rain. |
| Overview of the complete trip Fort Collins to (1) Red Cone/Webster Pass and (2) "Loop trails" and back to Fort Collins. |
| Elevation
profile for the whole trip |
| Monday, Aug 10 Fort Collins > Red Cone & Webster Pass > Nathrup Campsite 191 miles, elapsed time 12h 1m Photo set: 59 Tuesday, Aug 11 Nathrup Campsite > Old Monarch Pass road > Tomichi Pass > Alpine Tunnel west portal > Woodstock Ghost Town campsite 58 miles, elapsed time 11h 48m Photo set: 143 Wednesday, Aug 12 Woodstock Ghost Town campsite > Pitkin > Napoleon Pass > Mirror Lake F.S. Camp 26 miles, elapsed time 13h 07m Photo set: 72 Thursday, Aug 13 Mirror Lake F.S. Camp > Tin Cup Pass > Buena Vista (oil pan repair) > Iron City F.S. Camp 55 miles, elapsed time 8h 9m Photo set: 36 Friday, Aug 14 Iron City F.S. Camp > Grizzly Lake > St. Elmo > explore south of St. Elmo > Fort Collins 220 miles, elapsed time 12h 10m Photo set: 125 |