Ellis Jeep Trail, ElkHorn, Whiskey Park, Dunes
First of all, I need to say that these trails are almost a must do trail, especially the combination of Ellis, Elkhorn Mountain and Whiskey Park Road. Although Well's book rates both Elkhorn Mountain and Ellis Jeep Trails as difficult, we found no sections on this loop that would warrant this rating. Everything we did was moderate to easy and suitable for any rig, large or small. I don't know about Rob, but we ran the entire trail, with the exception of the two small mud sections in 2WD...and I am currently running an open rear axle. Neither one of us aired our tires down either and we were running our basic street tire pressure. This does not, to me, warrant a "difficult" rating in anyone's book and I would be tempted to rate the trail as 'casual' rather than 'easy' were it not for the remoteness. This was partially due to the time of the year that we ran them and the fact that the roads had been dry for quite awhile. Even early in the year or a little later in the Fall, I would tend to rate these as moderate. Big rigs like Roland's and Randy's would have only the slightest problems on a couple of turns that were a little tight.
There were just the two rigs on this trip, Rob in his FJ Land Cruiser and LaDawn and me in the black truck. We ran into Ken on the way back into town coming home from the dunes, too. The only other rigs we saw were a Willy's off of Elkhorn and some hunter/outfitters tents and rigs. We didn't see anyone else on the Ellis section of the trail.
The mud bogs were almost non existent, though I did manage to get the truck stuck on two different sections that I could have avoided. The section that has the largest mud bog now has an "intelligent" (though probably illegal" bypass) on the right side, which I will surely take the next time I do the trail...illegal or not. It just makes sense. I tried to do the "legal" section and buried the truck. The bog was very deep on the passenger side (I measured this later and found that it was a bit deeper than my 38" tires) and I stopped when I got very tippy on that side. Rob got to do a little Bill Moore payback and towed me out of this.
The country around Steamboat is beautiful, with huge aspen groves that you drive through. There are sections of the trail where ferns are on both sides of the trail and are as high as your windows. It looks as though you are in some tropical island forest sometimes. Camping is available pretty much everywhere you look, though the best camping seems to be off of the Elkhorn Mountain section, where we camped. The higher you go on this part, the bigger the aspens and the better the views.
We would have had some gorgeous views on this part of the trail had the weather not been overcast, but it was pretty all the same. Well's book was decent as far as directions go, especially as far as just getting on the right trail. Typical of his books, having a real map of the area was a big help as he never seems to make any notes concerning the numbered FS spur roads to use as reference. (This would have been very helpful as would have been small notes about things such as the first FS 499 dead ending at a trail head and maybe to take the second one as it is the correct one.) Oh well...anyone used to using his books is more than aware of the inconsistencies in them and takes these precautions as a matter of course...Traildamage filled in the blanks and provided critical information when you had to make a turn from FS 500 to FS 499 along the Continental Divide. FYI, it is the second FS 499 turn you want, not the first one. The first one dead ends at a hiking trail.
We started off on Ellis Jeep Trail, followed it to the end, turned and went along the back side of Hog Reservoir, picked up Whiskey Park Road to Elkhorn Mountain Road, followed Elkhorn to where it intersected with Whiskey Park Road down to where we started, a loop of around 55 miles, all on some really scenic backroads.
We also saw a great deal of wildlife, notably two large herds of antelope, one numbering over 20.
Since we were relatively close to the North Hills Sand Dunes, we decided that we would go and check these out on the way back home.
As dunes go, this is actually a small area, although kind of novel. It is tucked right against some low foothills and looks completely out of place. We did a little exploring, drove around on the dunes a bit, tried a couple of hills and had a little fun. Our impression was that this is an area better suited to ATVs and sand rails rather than heavier 4x4s, but it is worth checking out if you are nearby.
Here are some of our pictures, the first is a rather blurry picture of a sweet FJ 45 that we saw on the road. Don't ever let a camera salesman tell you that the still shots that you are going to get with a video camera are going to be high or even good quality, BTW, it just doesn't happen. If videos weren't so time consuming and such a royal PITA to get onto the forum, I would post more, but we have pretty much quit taking videos for that reason.:
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