Red Feather Lakes area, Colorado

December 17, 2011

See trip report below by Rod Pepper

These photos contributed by Rod Pepper

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These photos contributed by Mike Jacob

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Red Feather Lakes Run

It was a great day to be in the mountains! The weather was the big story on this run. It was incredibly nice and warm. We had 8 rigs show up at the mountain village of Red Feather Lakes, Colorado for what turned out to be a really cool, laid-back kinda day. RC4W members on this run besides myself, were Dewey Williams, Brian Kubal, Lenny Golding, Andy Heyd, Howard Segal, Mike Jacob and new prospective member Gary Clauson. Gary drives a really nicely done bright yellow early Bronco and is out of Colorado.     We started the day running The Big Hole Trail. George Brook and I found it several years ago and thought it would make a good snow bashing trail. And, it would have if there had been more snow in the area. Snow levels are down so far this year, for sure. What it did end up being, though, was good play time. Because of the awesome weather we spent a lot of time out of the rigs just hanging out. We even found some rocks to play on! Everyone had a pretty good time in the “Hole”.     From there we headed on down and ran the 7 Mile Trail. It gets a lot of use because it’s easy and close to Ft. Collins but on this day it was just a perfectly nice ride for us to cap off the day. At the end of the “easy” part we pressed on toward Stump Hill only to find it closed. It would have been really good, too!     7 Mile is a trail we used to frequent back in the ’80’s and after I saw it again I remembered that we used to go on past Stump Hill. There was no evidence that anything had been any further down that trail in a very long time. Really thick trees. At that point we had finally hit some fairly deep snow and it was all virgin, it was mid-afternoon, the sun was warm and golden and we hadn’t even tapped into our spare gas yet. Things were good. We were a rockin’ and a rollin’!     I could hear the ghosts of RC4W runs past, beckoning us to enter it’s abyss with an attitude and be ready to get after it! We did and it was good. Deep snow, tight trees, side hills, big holes and several creek crossings made the end of the day the best part. When we ran out of trail we were all forced to turn around in a small area. It was there that we got to witness Andy’s new Mike-powered front dig system on his Samurai. Talk about turn on a dime! Good stuff.     On the way back out we stopped to enjoy the sun going down before heading back to Red Feather and the end of a really fun day. Or was it the end? After loading up it was decided to do dinner in Ft. Collins at the Ever Open Cafe, another club favorite from back in the day. It was good. And that, my friends, really topped off the day! Happy Trails,     Rod