Wheeling this Weekend

[XterraRN]

I have this weekend off so I was thinking about going maybe Sunday 6/22 if anybody wants to go or has ideas I was thinking about the Rampart road area and some of the surounding trails I have Monday off as well if that would work better for anyone.

Drop me a line maybe we can get something together.

Jeremy

[OdiN]

Sunday would work better for me....if I'm not feeling half dead.

But isn't Rampart down by the springs?

[Sully4x4]

Rampart is a very long stretch of trail. It goes forever. I think it starts down by the springs. I know there is a turn off for it in Castle Rock...and I think it still goes all the way past Denver. Someone correct me if I am wrong.

[nmccorkell1384]

From Denver you can take I-25 south to Castle Rock-West on Founders Pkwy (By Outlet Malls)...Then go north on 85 (Santa Fe) until you come to Sedalia, take Hwy 67 west and Rampart Range Road will be on your left (I would guess around 10 miles from Sedalia). I think some of the better wheeling is further south by Woodland Park, so you might be better off taking I-25 all the way to CO Springs and then accessing from there.

[XterraRN]

I don't really care where we go but I have never been done in that area so I thought it would be cool to do. Wasn't saying that I wanted to do Rampart Road necessarily but anything in that area would be cool.

[DamnHippie]

Many of the roads that spur off from rampart range road have been freshly bulldozed this spring. They're not trails anymore, just smooth access roads (to nowhere, mostly). Martin & I wanted to run Winding Stairs Road, which traildamage.com had rated 6 - 8. Now it's closed right at the point where the road used to turn into hardcore trail. :(

One area we did find that hadn't been scraped down to 2-rated smoothness was the Illinois Gulch / Missouri Gulch area, this little area here (http://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&hl=en&geocode=&q=castle+rock+co&ie=UTF8&ll=39.146437,-105.087662&spn=0.046995,0.062914&z=14). There's nothing hardcore there, but it's definitely more trail-like than road-like.

[OdiN]

I don't want to drive too far if I don't have to....but not even sure I'll feel like going after workin on Saturday.

[XterraRN]

I'm open to any other sugestions as well I go just about anywhere within reason

[nmccorkell1384]

Good info DamnHippie...That is a bummer that they closed/cleaned up some of those roads...There used to be some pretty fun stuff around there. I know that there are still tons of trails for 4 wheelers and dirt bikes down there, but didn't know they had closed most of the full size vehicle trails.

[DamnHippie]

As far as I know, it's only the hardcore part of winding stairs road that has been flat-out closed. For the rest of them they've just been bulldozed to boring smoothness. That's just something youv'e gotta live with in this game, it happens to most trails every 5-10 years.

Pickle gulch (near Central City) got smoothed like that 3 or 4 years ago, but now it's nicely eroding back into a medium-hardcore trail. Same with nearby Miner's Gulch, which Martin & I ran Saturday -- the rock garden areas are coming back to life again, although they're not as hard yet as when I walked the trail 5 years ago (back then my Frontier was nowhere near modified enough to drive it).