Waldorf Trail Colorado
Everyone met up initially at the A&W in Idaho Springs at 10 a.m. Members in attendance were Dan Kimball, Ryan Geiser, Roy Lehhardt, and Sam Jorgensen. Dan brought along a friend, Gregg Choma and Chris from the El Jebel Jeep Club also joined in. We then drove west on I-70 to Georgetown where everybody aired down and diconnected, then headed up to the trail head.
Dan at the beginning of the trail head with the rest lined up behind.
Dan starting up the trail. Just enough snow to build our anticipation of what's to come.
And Ryan follows.
After the 1st switchback, you come to a fork in the trail, with the left fork being the harder trail and the right the easier way. Ryan starts up the harder left side of the fork. The snow is already 2+ feet deep here.
After Ryan took several attempts and only got about 700 yards up the trail, everyone decided to take the right fork for the easier side of the trail due to the initial depth of snow on the left fork.
Dan following the tracks made by Ryan and Sam, pushing through one of the deeper patches of snow on the right fork.
Gregg follows without too much problem.
Chris coming through, oooopps....starting to lose momentum...
and finally wound up having to shovel a path ahead to get going again. Fortunately Chris had brought his son along and he had lots of energy.
Roy following without too much problem, the Power-Trax autolocking front lockers sure came in handy here.
Sam, Dan, Gregg, Chris, and Roy lined up waiting on Ryan to break some more trail ahead. Good time for a photo opportunity, courtesy of Gregg.
About 1/2 way up the trail, the snow started getting deeper and Ryan had a small problem, his front lockers weren't activating. The deep snow had pushed his main airline for his ARB lockers into his exhaust pipe and melted a hole in the line. After a temporary fix on the trail he got them working again, but by this time it was starting to get late, so a mutual decision was made to turn around. Here is Chris backing up to a rare wide spot in the trail for the turn around.
With a little manpower to help, he finally got his front end around.
and was heading back down the trail.
Next it was Gregg's turn...backing down to the wide spot (following the initial line that Chris had taken)...
and managed to get it turned around without too much effort, although manpower and shovels were at the ready.
To be able to turn around meant trying to back up the hillside and left all with a souvenir, carrying away some of the snow from the hillside on the spare tires and back bumpers.
Then it was Dan's turn... backing down...
and making a 4 point turn around. Well done Dan.
Then it was Sam's turn, dang...goosed it a little bit too much and stuck it into the hillside. Thanks to the helping hands and some shoveling...
got it headed back down the trail to join up with the others.
At last, it was Ryan's turn and as usual he made it look too easy.
All in all, everyone had a good time and no major breakages were encountered. The weather cooperated, the sun was shining, temperatures weren't too cold and everyone had fun playing in the snow.
Waldorf Jeep Trail Jan 2004
Yosemite Sam
On The Rocks Jeep Club
