Hancock, Cumberland and Tincup Passes - 9/4/10
It was another great weekend. On Saturday, we met up with Richard and Shelly at around 9:30 in St Elmo. It really is a great little town. I walked into the general store up there because I needed to get a collar for my dog. As I walked in, I noticed the stereotypical 4 or 5 old men chatting and one woman hanging out. I asked if they had a dog collar (knowing full well my chances were slim) and one of them men looked at the guy next to him and said "Hey George, do you still have that collar from that dog we shot last week?" Needless to say I laughed and chatted for a few more minutes and headed out.
Back to the trail run report. With about 50 miles of trails ahead of us, we aired down and headed for Hancock pass. The trail was easy (Honda Civic easy) till we got to the Hancock town site. Before that you go over the washed out section of the trail which is below the old bridge. A lot of dirt and some gigantic culverts were added to help alleviate that happening again. Also before the town site is the Allie Belle mine. It looks like it is about to fall out into the road. Kinda cool. It was at this point that I realized that I had been down this road before in my old F150. I chickened out before. It was a long time ago and I had next to no experience 4-wheeling but having taken the whole trail now, the F150 would have been fine.
Again, back to the report. We took the spur at the town site which takes you to the Hancock Lake which was beautiful. We then headed back to the main trail and up to the pass. There is a nice rocky section on a shelf which is has some fun spots. The top of this shelf was where I had quit with the F150. It was kind of a waste since that was about the hardest part of the trail. We made it up to the top where we met some folks from the springs at the top of the pass. They were nice folk.
We headed down the trail and headed off to the Alpine Tunnel which is an old tunnel which caved in 10 or 15 years ago. The site is pretty cool to look at but the tunnel itself is a bit disappointing. Basically all there is a trail about wide enough for a narrow gauge train to go through up to a dirt pile. There is some heavy equipment working on some digging at the tunnel which lead us to believe that they were opening it up so you could see some of the original tunnel. There was one of those "Obama is giving folks jobs" signs at the site. After talking to the historian at the tunnel, we realized it was just another waste of funds. They are only digging it so you can see the top few rows of the portal into the mountain. I was raised with the idea that if you were going to do something, do it right. This seemed like a waste. The palisade walls on the trail going up and down from the tunnel was very cool.
When we headed for the longest (And fastest) part of the trip up and over Cumberland pass. Lots of dust. I was in front so I'll let Richard tell more about that. The views from the top of Cumberland pass were spectacular. You could see miles and miles of the continental divide. It was spectacular to say the least.
Then we headed down to Tincup. It was getting to be a bit late so we didn't spend much time in the town but we did stop by the Tincup cemetery. It is one of mine and my wife's hobbies to look at old cemeteries. This one was cool. It had different "knolls" or hills for folks of different religions. Small ones for the Jewish and Catholics and a big one for protestants. It was interesting that many of the headstones were actually made of wood.
Alright, now for tincup pass. The trail was "Honda Civic" easy till you got to Mirror Lake. This was pretty. Tincup was pretty darn easy. There, evidently, was a harder "shortcut" we could have (and should have) taken but I didn't know about it. Now I do and we'll do that next time. The trail was fun and had spectacular views from the top. After you get to the top, the ride down is deceptively long. Not hard but long. Lots of camping spots.
Despite the great trail run, the best part (as always) was the great company. Richard and Shelly are great people. I don't know how long it will be before Richard can post up some pictures as he headed off to the Gulf to run his robot submarines which has got to be the coolest job ever. He'll be back in 3 weeks.
Sorry for the long report. Pics to follow.
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