Balanced Rock Road
Balanced Rock Road was the second trail of the day. The sun was still out with blue skies, and it was warming up quite a bit. The very start of Balanced Rock Road had tire tracks like Mount Herman Road did, but the tire tracks ended after a short distance. It seemed like that vehicle turned around.
Matt was the leader for the day, so he got to break the trail and be the first one down after the snowstorm.
Most of Balanced Rock Road had six inches of snow with a few snow drifts. It turned out that Matt would have an easier trip than everybody behind him.
The snow got packed and very slippery with the traffic we made! Julie slid sideways a bit, but she stopped before sliding completely off the trail into an off-camber "hole" off the trail from rain washout.
We helped her backed up a bit and then she then was able to stay on the trail with a bit more speed. Everyone else made it past the off-camber spot with no issues.
As the trail started getting steeper, we gave each other more room just in case. The snow was a bit deeper in some spots, but not enough to give us trouble. Nobody had any more issues until we passed the sharp, downhill turn.
Then, after a short distance, Matt found a second washed-out section on the trail, but this one was a little bigger. Despite a few attempts Matt slid more and more off the trail and down the side.
Everybody got out and helped shovel to clear the snow on the right side of Matt's Jeep. That helped, and everyone made it through with no issues after the shoveling.
At the end of Balanced Rock Road, we stopped for lunch. We saw a lot of hikers around the upper Palmer Lake Reservoir area. After lunch, we started back up Balanced Rock Road. For a while, everything was going well, but it didn't stay that way.
At the sharp, uphill area, Julie wasn't able to move up the hill -- she was slipping too much. She couldn't get her lockers to turn on. After a few attempts, she tried a line in the snow that had been driven in, which gave her enough traction to make it up the hill.
For the rest of Balanced Rock Road, Matt and Julie went faster, so she had speed and momentum help her go up all the little hilly spots.
We stopped a few times to let everybody catch up and regroup.
The second time Matt and Julie stopped to wait for the group Matt got a text saying that Tim got a flat tire. He had a spare with him, and they were changing his tire. Not too long after we were all back together.
The rest of the trail was not so hilly, and we all slowed down some.
Soon, we came to the end of Balanced Rock Road and started the way back down the mountain. On the way down Tim said that his steering wheel was not straight anymore and his four-wheel drive stopped working. We slowed down so he could keep going without sliding since he didn't have four-wheel drive to help him stay on the trail.
We went to parking lot near the trail head for Mount Herman Road to air up. Everybody had a good time on our snowy trail run, but we found out later from Tim what his four-wheel drive problem was. He broke his front axle and axle shaft (see the photos for this trail run).
He thinks he broke his Jeep on the way back up and out of Balanced Rock Road, the same time he blew out his tire. He hit a rock going up the hill. The only way he was able to keep driving was because of his axle sleeve holding the axle together. Looks like Tim will win the Trail Damage of the Year award!
Reports from Other Days: 8
Use the arrows or dots to flip through the previews of the other reports for Balanced Rock Road. Click one of them to read more and see all of the photos from that day.
