Mount Baldy
Mount Baldy was the only trail that we had scheduled for the day. The sun was out, and the forecast was predicting a nice day for early May! Most of us met at the South Home Depot in Colorado Springs, and then Walt met us near the trailhead for Mount Baldy.
After the long drive down Old Stage Road to the trailhead of Mount Baldy we regrouped with Walt. After a short break we started going up Mount Baldy. At one of the big, muddy, water holes we all drove into the muck for some pictures and a little bit fun.
As we made it higher up Mount Baldy, we started seeing some snow remains on the ground in the woods and then snow going across the trail from what had been big snow drifts this winter.
We stopped at the open area to take in the views. We could see from there that the shelf road part of Mount Baldy had snow on the trail. As we went higher up, we indeed ran into a lot more snow on the trail. The rest of the way to the sharp right-hand turn to up to the shelf road part of Mount Baldy was snow covered in the tree areas.
Going up to the shelf road section of the trail, the snow drifts started to become deep. We were off camber as we drove through the snow drifts.
On the shelf road, we ran into a few Jeeps driving in reverse down the trail. This group hadn’t been able to get turned around further up Mount Baldy. They have spent some time recovering a Jeep that got stuck on the road. The other group of Jeeps informed us that just a bit further ahead there was a snow and rockslide that made the trail unpassable. Not too far from where we stopped, we found an area that was big enough for all of us to turn around one at a time.
After all that getting turned around, we went to the area where we made the sharp right turn and stopped for lunch. After lunch, we went down to the second half of Eagle Rock for a different way out.
The rest of Eagle Rock was fun. Callista's Jeep lost power briefly from going through a big mud puddle and getting the engine wet. We waited for a few minutes, and then it started snowing. After a short time of drying out the engine, it was up and running well again. We played in a river crossing at the start of the Bull Park trail.
Finally, we returned back to the start of the Old Stage Road to air back up. We passed a truck stuck in the ditch on the side of the road. We asked them if they needed help, but they said no. Just as we were finishing airing up, a person from the stuck truck walked up to us and asked for help. They were not able to get enough traction to get the truck out of the ditch without winches. So, Matt went and helped pull the truck out of the ditch. It only took five minutes with the winch.
After the truck recovery, we all went back home. It was a great day trying to get to the end of Mount Baldy.
Reports from Other Days: 9
Use the arrows or dots to flip through the previews of the other reports for Mount Baldy. Click one of them to read more and see all of the photos from that day.
