| Monday August 13, 2001 Trail Report for the entire weekend: Yankee Hill Road, Kingston Peak & Caribou Creek Well Cherie, Tyler and I slept great last night. Friday we rushed from work up to Golden to load the cold food and a few last items. Our last stop was to get Tyler from the daycare center. As soon as we picked him up it had started raining, by the time we got to the campground it was quite a downpour. We stayed at Columbine Campground north of Central City(http://resourceanalysis.com/camps/camp13/camp13.html). It rained pretty hard for about a half hour to forty five minutes. It continued to rain on and off as we set up camp. Once we got the tent up and the Kia locked up there wasn�t much else to do, so we went to sleep. After a long wet & chilly night we were packing as soon as the sun was up. With the Kia fully loaded we hit the trail before seven and got going. The campground was at just under 10,000 feet, so we head higher than that right away. The first leg of the trip was Yankee Hill Road. The book I was using rated it moderate for several steep rocky sections(http://www.mapgear.net/funtreks_c2_window.htm). The Kia was very sluggish in high range with the elevation and fully loaded with gear. Once I put it into low range it felt much better. I really think that the manual hubs will eventually be a big plus with the option of driving in two wheel drive low. That will be the perfect solution to those spots where grade is a problem, but where traction is still good. So we are rolling along and the road is fairly flat at first. It becomes pretty rutted and gets to the point of being almost back and forth from side to side with the depth of the potholes. That is the section that is considered easy. Before you start climbing there is a stretch of dirt that if it is wet is a real mess. Even though there had been rain the night before it was very solid when we went through. Here is a link to a guy in a Cherokee that took some pictures of this section. http://home.earthlink.net/~wslin/jeeptrails/YankeeHillRd.htm A little further on the road narrows and gets steeper. The surface becomes exposed rock and rocks on the surface. Nothing too serious, but this is where I put it into low. A little ways up we pulled over to a sunny spot and ate some breakfast and took care of the get ready for the day stuff. A Ford Ranger went by us while we were there, but that was the first person we saw this day, a good reason to get going early. Once we got back on the trail it was pretty smooth sailing. There are so many off-shoots from the trail, so you really need to pay attention to your directions. As you get to the top there is a huge area where a forest fire has completely cleared the side of the mountain. It has been a couple of years since there is ground cover and some flowers and stuff. According to what I read I thought I would be able to see St. Mary�s Glacier from up there, but I guess you actually have to hike to the top of Yankee Hill because we couldn�t see it from the trail. As you start to descend it gets quite steep and suddenly you are down. The end of Yankee Hill road comes right out onto Highway 275. Once we got to Highway 275 at the end of Yankee Hill Road, we turned south(left) and went just a couple hundred yards to a row of mailboxes and took the right onto Alice Road. The trail head is just up the hill from the little town of Alice. As soon as I was sure I was on the trail I pulled over and aired down. At this point I think it was somewhere between ten and eleven in the morning. This trail is Kingston Peak. The same book said that this was one of the more difficult moderate trails, so I would have been more comfortable with some company. Here are some other links for the trail: http://www.ilovejeeps.com/trails/trail.cfm?ID=21 http://members.tripod.com/HoboJeepers/KingLoop.htm http://www.trr4wd.com/kin0898.htm http://members.tripod.com/HoboJeepers/KP7-8-00.htm http://www.fordranger.com/offroad/8900.html http://www.arches.uga.edu/~peteuga/St_Mary'sx.html http://www.xterrain.com/kingstonpeak1.html http://www.alpine14rs.org/TripReports/october.htm Kingston Peak was a great trail. It was less varied than Yankee Hill Road. I mean the type of terrain stayed pretty much the same, that exposed rocky stuff. I really like it because it takes you so high. I couldn�t find an exact measurement, but it goes over 12,000 feet at the peak and you drive within fifty feet of the summit. Before you get to the summit you come to a huge winding pile of rocks. This is a big wall made up of small rocks that has been built by individual rocks set there by everyone who makes the summit. The tradition is to place a rock on the wall and then put your name in the book. We couldn�t find the book, but we did each set a rock on the wall. We at lunch just on the other side of the peak. The most difficult section was a little further along. It is the only area of soft dirt and it is on a very steep section. My book says that if you run that part uphill to rate this trail as difficult. With all the crap in the back of the Kia I didn�t want to run it that direction in addition to being alone. Going down it wasn�t all that bad. You could see all of the tracks of people spinning like crazy to get up. Once past the steep hill you get into some very long switchbacks until it becomes relatively level. When you get out of the brush you come up to another wide muddy section. This are still had some deep mud. We avoided it, but there were some larger vehicles with bigger tires playing around in it. A little further and then you come to the end of Kingston Peak. Apex Road goes either left or right, we went left to take us to Rollins Pass East. Both of these roads are considered easy and are very unremarkable. We didn�t play around very much throughout the day because we were needing to make it to the campground where we wanted to stay on Saturday night. We got back to highway 72 and headed north to Nederland. We stopped for the bathroom and ice and got back on the road. We headed for Rainbow Lakes campground which is less than half way through Caribou Creek. This is the trail that we were going run on Sunday morning before heading back to Golden. The moderate section of Caribou Creek doesn�t start until you go past the campground. There wasn�t a place left to camp, so we had to backtrack to the highway. We found a spot a little way off the highway and set up. We started around three o�clock and it rained a little, but didn�t stick around for long. We actually got a campfire going this night and were able to bbq some burgers and roast marshmallows. This was a much more pleasant night of camping. The next morning we were up early once again. We decided to go back to Rainbow Lakes to try some fishing. We repeated the trip from the day before to get back to the campground. There are a few parking spots for visitors to hike up to the lakes and fish. The hike is pretty short and the lakes are gorgeous. We stayed a little less than two hours but didn�t even get a nibble. Back to the car and on to the trail. We didn�t get too far past the crossing shown in these pictures: http://www.geocities.com/jeepndave/caribou.htm before I ran into the back of a group of Land Rovers. There was a Solihull Society logo on a couple of them, so I assume that was a trip of the local club. I know a lot of guys say that they have never seen a Rover on the trail, but this was a varied group. I couldn�t see the whole group. The last guy said there were about twelve vehicles. I saw Range Rovers, Discoveries and there was a Defender bringing up the rear. Here is their link: http://www.solihullsociety.org It was cool to watch that Defender creep over some wet rocky sections. If you look at their website and check out some of the photos he is the green one with the great big Warn logo on the side. Past that interesting section the Rover group headed up to do Eldorado Mountian, but we kept going along Caribou Creek back to the highway. The rest of the trail was not too exciting. I regret not going along with the Rovers over Eldorado. They had a spotter that would monitor all of the Rovers going over the obstacles and he kept looking at the Kia pretty weird. Once we got back to the highway I aired back up and we drove back to Golden to unpack. Overall it was a great weekend and we used just over a half tank of gas for the entire trip. I love living in Golden so close to the mountains. I was much more impressed with the Kia this weekend compared to its performance last weekend at Jenny Creek. Let me know if anyone is interested in hitting some more trails. |