The next run was a double trail ride. We did the Wheeler Lake trail and Mosquito Pass. This was with Larry and Ian, John and his wife in the yellow Jeep and my son along for the ride with me.
Airing down.
Lots of mining history in this area.
Just behind the mine building was a cool creek running.
The first challenge comes right after the building, fairly easy section for sure.
Next up. A nice little section to climb.
We got to challenge ourselves on this one. I took the wrong line and had to winch to get over it.
Larry took a different section and with no traction device in the front diff then, didn't have the pull to get up to the top. He had to winch too.
The trail winds up this beautiful valley that the leaves were starting to turn for fall.
Shortly into the relentless section of rocks known as Bowling ball hill Larry had spaced out for a second and absolutly tagged a rock with his tie rod. The resulting damage bent the tie rod all to hell and broke the steering stabilizer off of it. Ian is pulling the stabilizer off here.
Further up the trail, now above timberline.
Camped out at the top.
Wheeler lake. Quite pretty, but the fishing stunk.
Camp.
We came down the next morning with a bit of traffic coming at is going up. The start of Mosquito Pass was only a few miles down from where we got back on the highway. But That short amount of pavement proved that the lack of steering stabilizer and bias plu Swampers were not going to behave at speeds above 35 mph at all. Death wobble came on hard and fast. So I ran ahead to Fairplay to find a parts store and locate a stabilizer for Larry's truck. The rest show up and we commenced to the parking lot patch job.
Repair completed, we make our way up to Mosquito Pass.
More mines up here too.
The summit of the pass at 13,185 ft of elevation.
Camp setup on the backside of the pass. Pro-tip. Don't leave the paper towels on the table overnight if it's going to be windy and rainy. Looked like we got TP'd with a jumbo roll the next morning. It was all over camp.
The trail dropped into the town of Leadville, the highest incorporated city in the US.
From here it was an easy ride home on pavement. We took it a little slower since Larry still had some wobble north of 60mph but we made it home without any other issues.