Colorado Cruiser: 2016 Mountain Man Campout Day 1

Video of Day 1

This is my 3rd year of attending the Mountain Man campout. It's a group of guys heading out into the high country of Colorado to camp and ride 4 wheelers. It's organized by my friend Dave B for the last 13 years.

I rode up with another friend, Dave W, then rode in his Can Am side by side 4 wheeler.

We all met at Dave B's house at 5:00am to convoy together. This campout was going to take place down in the southwest corner of Colorado, down near Durango. That's about 2 hours farther than they normally go.

As I said, I rode with Dave W in his brand new Ford F150. I had to wear all new clothes and prove that I'd showered in the last 30 minutes before he would let me in the cab. Well.... maybe not that bad, but he was awfully protective of that truck. It even had new car smell.

He'd also spent a day picking and pocking through his music collection and ripping youtube videos to produce a new playlist for us to listen to. 90% of the list was the same as my mellow play list so I liked it allot. But I had to tease him about the touchy feely songs.

We all stopped for breakfast in Buena Vista at a restaurant called Jans. It's a mountain man tradition to eat there. It's pretty good food, but it' mostly a time to meet all the others in the group which changes from year to year as old people can't make it, and new people can. There were 3 people I hadn't met before in this group.

We stopped again in Montrose to get last minute groceries, gas, and lunch. Gas was $2.19 a gallon (just so people in 2095 will know how much gas cost).

From Montrose we turned South down some of the prettiest highway scenery in the country, let alone the state. The mountains in this are are called the San Juans, and a particular section of road is called the San Juan Skyway. I often come ride through this are on my motorcycle with my good friend John F.

In fact, I had planned a trip with John for this past weekend and hadn't planned to go on the mountain man. John and I were going to ride to Taos New Mexico, Lake City Colorado, and do the San Juan Skyway. I hadn't planned to go on the mountain man because I don't actually own or ride quad ATVs, and I'm too cheap to rent one.

Last year I rode with Dave W, but this year he was going to have his son riding with him. When Dave's son got a job, and every other person he could think of backed out, Dave broke down and called me to see if I still wanted to ride with him. (Well I probably wasn't last on the list, just 3rd from the last).

I was just days away from starting the ride with John, but I told Dave I'd think about it for a couple hours, then give him an answer. I sent John a text message telling him I was considering it and talked to my wife. To my surprise, John texted back that it would be fine to cancel the trip, and my wife told me she thought it would be good for me to go out with the guys in my area. So called Dave back and told him yes, I'd go.

Anyway, back to the actual trip.

We drove South out of Montrose to Ridgeway and Ouray. Ouray is one of my all time favorite town. It's a scenic little tourist town at the bottom of a narrowing valley with tall towering pink rock walls on either side. John and I almost always plan our trips so we can eat lunch here, so it felt weird to just drive right through town and out the other side without even stopping.

As you leave Ouray to the south we immediately began climbing switchbacks up the canyon wall. The switchbacks give great views of the town and I craned my neck to gawk at the views.

When the road leveled out we were on a 2 lane road running the length of, and chiseled into the side of a cliff. There is a 300 foot drop on the right hand side, and no guard rails because there just isn't room for them. The next 5 miles is all like this with the road tacked onto the cliff face, steep drop on the right down to the river at the bottom of the gorge, and fantastic views all around us.

The fall colors were in full view at this altitude and took many pictures with a very guilty knott in the pit of my gut because this was the very day John and I would have been riding this section of road, and it doesn't get much better color than this.

Thankfully the rain began to fall and the temperature plummeted. I say thankful because it eased just a small touch of my guilt.

I snapped photos with my cool new Samsung S7 active phone. It's by far the best camera phone I've ever had, and I loved the image stabilization, color saturation, and great clarity. I even took a few videos that seemed to come out pretty good.

We arrived in the town of Silverton which is where we would turn and drive up into the mountains for our camp. Silverton is an old mining town that's turned into a tourist attraction. In the summer there are 30 restaurants and 50 small shops. In the winter there are 2 or 3 restaurants and 1 small gas station and store. It is nearing the end of the season, but it's also the height of the fall colors, so town was packed with cars and people walking the streets and shop.

Again, it was kind of weird to just drive through town without stopping but that's what we did. We drove right up the main street of town and up into the mountains behind town. The road was paved a couple miles out of town but it switched to a very well maintained dirt road. A few more miles on we passed the Silverton Ski Resort. It wasn't much of a resort with 30 year old busses and a single ski lift.

A few more miles and we reached an active mine. It was nothing like Morenci or any of the other Arizona mines I've seen, but there were some big catapillars and backhoes moving things around. There were a couple great big plastic bags full of something, probably leaching silver out of the ore.

We turned right and climbed even higher up a slowly narrowing valley towards a big bowl at the end. Silverton is at 9,000 foot elevation and we had climbed at least 2,000 foot higher since leaving it. The road to the mine was very well maintained, but the road beyond was much narrower and more rocky. It was still a pretty good road and you could easily take a stock SUV on it.

We only stopped driving when the road finally ended. There was a large circular gravel turn around area, and this was where we'd camp, along the fringes of the turn around. The elevation was about 11,250. We were at the top end of a narrow valley with tall walls surrounding us on 3 sides and forming a big bowl. In almost all bowls like this there seems to be a naturally formed lake, and this was the same.

The last was a couple hundred yards beyond us with marshy grassland between us and the lake caused by water seeping out of the lake. The water eventually forms into a small stream the ran around the edge of our camping area with little burbling sounds as it jumps through the rocks. It was very picturesque.

Since most of the turnaround was filled with gravel and large rocks, the only place to camp was on the grassy fringe. Dave B set up his camping trailer and the kitchen on the far right side of the circle.

The rest of us setup tents on the left side with the campfire at the point of the circle nearest the lake.

Dave B and Dave W had scouted the place a month early and had decided that it would be best to setup a single large tent for most of the people to share because there was so little grass around the circle. 5 of us were going to share a big canvas wall tent so we go busy setting it up. The tent was borrowed from someone who wasn't even on the campout so we had to figure out the proper way to erect it. 2 years previous we'd used a similar tent so it wasn't totally new to us.

We got the tent up and I spread my big blue plastic tarp across the floor. We started with Steve, Blake, me, and Ryan in the tent that first night.

Once camp was setup I helped setup the kitchen. I had brought my big 36" gas griddle along with Dave B's big camp stove. We setup in a big square, then put up Steve's popup awning over the whole thing to give us a nice dry cooking area. The awning also trapped some heat under it so it became a favorite place for everyone to stand and eat dinner rather than out in the open wind and rain.

Ryan had brought 2 big 10' awnings that we setup between the kitchen and the fire with all the chairs underneath or out around the fire as the rain would come and go. As the rain would stop, we'd dash over by the fire and warm up, then the rain would return and we'd wander back over to the awnings. I'm sure we looked like some sort of odd migrating animal.

Dave announced that dinner was ready by 6:30. He'd made fried chicken, corn, and mashed potatoes with white chicken gravy. I'd helped by cutting up a water melon.

After dinner we tried making the fire big enough to make it worth sitting around even with the rain falling, but the wind, cold, and rain won out and most of us wound up going to sleep by 8:00.

There were 4 of us in the big tent and I'd wound up somewhat in the middle. I had my cot, a self inflating pad, my big extra wide 0 degree sleeping big, and quilt over the top of me. I was using the battery out of my Honda Sporster to run my CPAP. I slept very soundly for over 10 hours despite the sound of rain and wind constantly abusing the tent.

Packing up at 5:00am