AxleIke

Thought i'd post this for folks in the Denver, Boulder Area.

First Note: This road is NOT hard core at all, when dry. It is a good road that is somewhat challenging for stock and slightly modded vehciles. If you have a locker stock, you'll be able to walk all over this trail, no need for trick suspension or tires. The dirt is very loose and fine, and it's steep, so traction is hard to get, and if it were wet, it would be VERY slippery.

Note Two: The route described here is one on hundreds of roads in this area. It is used extensively for dirt biking, so if you like quiet camping, don't go here. There may be other, harder trails, but we got a late start, and didn't have time to explore more. My 4Runner is only slightly modified, and my brothers PU is stock. We had trouble on a couple obstacles, no lockers, so lost traction. When we tried a different line, we made it up.

Some of you may know about this road already, but it's not in many books, if any. My brother and i went out to try and run Middle St Vrain and Coney Flats roads today, but they were still closed for the season. So, we tried going up road 216 instead. We started from the Peaceful Valley/Camp Dick Campgrounds Road on an unmarked dirt road. After traveling along the road for about 3 or 4 miles, we had encountered very little in the way of rocks or any obstacles. A few shallow mudholes was all. When a group of stock exploders met us, we started to get very discouraged. We then met a guy in a Blazer who told us to try this Road 216. We followed the dirt road back, and got there.

The first obstacle we encountered was about 100-200 yards in, just a steep rock wth alternating holes, causing my bro to lose traction and have to back off. I got out and spotted him, and he got up. I followed his line, and had not trouble. We continued up a rocky hill about 1/4 mile after that, and passed a flat area, with little or no rocks. We then came to a fork, both roads indicating 216, so we assumed it to be a loop, which it was. We went left and climbed a steep, very loose hill, with a large rock obstacle in the middle. The rock formed a ledge, about a foot high on the left, and maybe 2 inches on the right. We went right, and got up it, but with the steepness and loose surface, we found traction to be very difficult.

After the steep hill, we contined up, less steep, until we got to a switch back. Immediately after the turn, well, baisically on the turn, was a large, off camber rock face, and on the left was a washed area, with a large tree protruding into the trail. We went left, but came VERY close to the tree, my rear was puckered up seeing how close the tree came to the truck. About a half mile farther on, we came to another fork, but had to go right to continue around the loop to get home, the left fork we will have to explore another time. On the way down, the trail was pretty un eventful, but goes throught tight trees. We got to the original fork, and headed back out.

Once back on the main road, we headed left, continuing along the way we were headed when we came in, instead of retracing our steps. The man in the Blazer had said that we could get out that way. Within a mile we were back out on the highway, headed back to Nederland.

I will attempt to post a map as soon as i get my TOPO program running. It's not being cooperative. I apologize if the summary is sketchy at best, but we weren't prepared to be finding this trail today. I also have pics i will post, as soon as the CD gets developed. The place we exited from only took us an hour to get back from Boulder from, so it's not that far of a drive.