Middle St. Vrain & Coney Flats trails
|
Meet
up with FR4x4 members Rob, Chris, Mike and Rick and
Lorraine at Lyons CO to travel the Middle St. Vrain and Coney Flats
trails. There has been some "first of the season" snow in various spots
of the state. Today has a potential to have some snowfall on our
travels. If not, I expect we'll be driving up into some fog as the
clouds are hanging low atop the mountains. If nothing else, today
is a coolish day down in town and as we ascend the temps should drop. |
| Elevation profile Close to 10,000FT but not quite there. |
| Low clouds in front of us |
| Getting a tad higher up the St. Vrain canyon we start to see snow on some trees. |
| At the entrance to the Middle St. Vrain (MSV) trail there's a set of "low clearance vehicles must keep out" rocks. Mike getting ready to process over them. |
| Chris's turn |
| Following Rob in his Toyota FJ |
| Rick & Lorraine in their Dodge pickup. The ?38"? tires and lift give it enough ground clearance for everything these trails have. |
| Without the lift, the option is to pick a different line. |
| These trails have many small, and one large, water hole to go through. |
| A bit of remaining Aspen gold |
| We're taking a break at the end of the MSV trail. Hiking / horseback riding trails extend beyond here. We'll backtrack 50 yards to the Coney Flats trail for our way out. |
| The first obstacle on the Coney Flats trail. It doesn't look like much but it can do a good job blocking progress. |
| Up at the largest water hole to cross. The fog is perhaps the thickest. On a clear day we can see Sawtooth Mountain to the west. |
| The cold and fog are frosting / icing everything. |
| Rabbit tracks? |
| A young pine tree growing in an open area. |
| Out from Coney Flats the group is airing up the tires and chatting. When I went to drive away, the Jeep wouldn't move. Cold temps, driving through water pools and humid / fog resulted in frozen parts. I ended up putting it into 4-low to break free of the frozen brakes. I could feel the emergency brakes still a large drag so I stopped and borrowed a large pliers from Mike. I used'm to release the stuck emergency brake assemblies. One of the front wheel lockout hubs was frozen as well. |
