Colorado Wheeling, Fly Fishing, & Camping Trip - Father & Son Adventure

2024 Week-Long Colorado Wheeling Trip

Trip Background

Dad and I had been planning this trip for months, researching the most iconic mountain passes that Colorado has to offer, hoping to traverse as many dirt miles from Denver to southwestern Colorado as possible.

My dad was the person who got me into offroading very early on in my life. From a newborn, I was riding with him on ATVs around Kansas, and by the time I was 8, he had gotten me my own little 90cc Polaris ATV so I could start riding myself. Over the years, he's taught me how to ride those ATVs, motorcycles, drive in the snow, and provided so many other driving experiences. However, this was his first venture into offroading in a "full-sized" vehicle (I know a Tacoma is mid-sized, but for lack of a better term, off-roading something that is typically driven on the road and not specifically designed by the manufacturer to live its life offroad).

Photo of my dad & I​

Trip Beginning

To start the trip, I picked my dad up from Union Station on Saturday, and we headed back to the house to finish loading up the truck. Although I had spent hours getting the truck ready for this trip in the months before, of course, something had to go wrong right before we left. You might be wondering what that problem was… well, the driver-side rear tire had developed a slow leak after taking it into my typical shop for getting a new TPMS sensor in another tire. For whatever reason, the valve had gotten broken and jammed, causing a slow air leak. Given the leak, my dad and I opted to grab the full-size spare from under the truck and replace the one that was slowly leaking.

After sweating our a**es off getting it tossed on, we finalized organizing the truck, grabbed a quick bite for dinner, and headed out on 285 towards Bailey, CO.

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We arrived at camp late that evening and set up a simple camp. That night, my dad and I decided we'd first try both sleeping in the bed of the truck on the @BamBeds platform. From a space perspective, we were comfortable, but due to snoring, sleep wasn't great that night, haha.

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Day 1: Red Cone Pass

We started day 1 of the trip with some coffee and a quick protein bar at camp. We deconstructed the sleeping setup and loaded up the truck, heading out for Red Cone Pass.

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We started on the eastern side of the route, near the trailhead split for Red Cone or Webster Pass. The trail started off moderate but quickly became more difficult as we began our climb. The forested area of the trail was by far the most challenging. There are a few obstacles that require skids and rock sliders, and in my opinion, a rear locker, to get through, along with some switchbacks that are decently tight for a longer wheelbase vehicle. We made it through this part of the trail with no issues. My dad was worried about a couple of the obstacles when we approached them, but he was thoroughly impressed with the truck's capability as we made it through them. He also did an incredible job spotting, but no surprise there with his offroad experience.

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After taking the final few switchbacks, the tree line started to fade, and we made our way into the alpine. The views from the top are incredible, with panoramic vistas of the surrounding peaks. From the summit of Red Cone, which stands at an impressive 12,801 feet, you can see major peaks like Grays and Torreys to the east, and the rugged Tenmile Range to the west. We approached the summit and got our first sight of the mountain goats. Although I've spent many days high in the mountains over the last few years, this was my first time seeing these goats in person, which was so cool. Definitely a bucket list wildlife encounter in CO. They seemed very normalized to hikers and vehicles passing through and just hung out by us at the top.

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After snapping some pictures, we took the VERY steep descent down to where Red Cone connects to Webster Pass. We took Webster Pass westbound towards Montezuma, enjoying continued views of the mountain valley.

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After getting off Webster Pass, we hopped back on the highway from Montezuma to Breckenridge, grabbed some ice, and then headed to camp.

That night, we camped at one of the dispersed sites about 20 minutes outside of Breck. Upon arriving at camp, we set up the Clam, plopped our camping items inside, set up my tent, and got a fire started. We whipped up some sandwiches and enjoyed some good conversation recapping the day and planning for day 2 before crawling into bed. It rained off and on that night, which provided a soothing pitter-patter on top of the tent and truck while we slept. What a way to start the trip.

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Stay tuned for updates from days 2-7!​

 

Looks like good times.

Why the clam? Are there lots of skeeters up there, this time of year?

 

Thanks! It was an incredible trip.

Yeah, in certain areas there are tons of skeeters. That spot specifically is right by a small creek that has pools of water that are good breeding grounds for them, so it had quite a few. It also rained that night so we popped it up for some shelter.

 

That’s so cool. Father and Son.
Few get to enjoy time together like that.
Good for you.

 

Thank you, man. It was such an incredible trip. It was great on so many fronts - a week spent together catching up & hanging out doing what we both love to do and a full week off of work. Not much is better than that!

 

Day 2: Fairplay to Leadville Via Weston Pass + Drive to Lake City

Day 2 kicked off with packing up camp and venturing into downtown Breckenridge for a burrito and coffee. We stopped at Unravel, which serves expensive but very good coffee. This was the first time I'd tried any of their breakfast food, and both my dad and I agreed that the burrito was pretty sub-par, haha. After breakfast, we fueled up the truck and made our way down to Mosquito Pass, which was our originally planned route. However, due to snow, the pass was closed to thru traffic. So, we did some quick research in my FunTreks books and determined that Weston Pass would be a great alternative.

We made the quick drive down to Fairplay and made our way to the Weston Pass trailhead. I aired the tires down, snapped a few pictures, and we were on our way.

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Weston Pass was incredible. A great alternative route for my dad, given his fear of heights, but still wildly beautiful with great views of the Rockies. It was originally developed during the Colorado Gold Rush and become a popular route for miners traveling between Fairplay and Leadville due to its (relatively speaking) lower elevation. At its highest, the pass reaches about 11,900 feet and has some great hiking, dispersed & established camping, and great alpine scenery.

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As we finished the trail and headed towards Leadville, storm clouds started to roll in. My dad and I stopped at the Leadville mining district to take a quick glance at some of the old structures and some of the "boom day" rocks that sit in the parking lot. Leadville was once one of the richest silver mining towns in the world and still retains much of its historic charm. They actually celebrate their annual Boom Day Festival that weekend before. Even after asking one of the locals who worked at the Pizza shop what it is, I'm still not entirely clear on what the festival celebrates, so if anyone has more info on that, I'd love to know!

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At this point in the day, we were starving and decided a pizza sounded like the move for lunch. We swung by High Mountain Pies, ordered a meatlovers, and enjoyed the pizza in their covered outdoor patio while a huge storm blew in.

After lunch, we stopped into a coffee shop and discussed if we wanted to camp near Twin Lakes or make our way down to the San Juans, where we'd be spending the rest of our trip. After some contemplation, we decided that it made the most sense to head down to Lake City and set up camp so we could fully enjoy the following day. So we grabbed a coffee, hopped in the truck, and made the ~3 hr drive down south.

We arrived at camp early evening and did some perusing of sites to see which area we'd call home for the next couple of days. We landed on a secluded site that was on Lake San Cristobal, but a bit off of the cliffside, so that we had some privacy and protection from the wind. We paid the camp host, got camp set up, and started a fire. Unfortunately, the tent was still pretty damp from the rain the night before, so we strung it along the side of the truck to the Clam, and it dried out quickly with the wind. After enjoying some time around the fire, we called it a night in preparation for Day 3.

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Great pictures and definitely creating great memories with dad. Thanks for sharing.

 

Thank you Jimmy! Appreciate the kind words.

 

Day 3: Cinnamon Pass

After a great night of sleep, we woke up bright and early, eager to explore the San Juans. For day 3, my dad and I had thought it'd be fun to change up our mode of transportation & decided we'd try to rent a UTV to drive the Alpine Loop. As mentioned earlier, I grew up riding ATVs with my dad, so renting the UTV had us incredibly exciting for many reasons, but mainly the for freedom you feel when driving/riding in an open air vehicle.

In order to make this happen, we'd need to find a business who had a UTV available, which I thought would be no problem given it was the middle of the week and Lake City has tons of businesses who rent UTVs & jeeps. My dad & I both have always longed to own a Polaris Rzr or Can-Am Maverick, so we had our eyes set on renting one of the many available in Lake City. After calling nearly every business in town, only one had a UTV available for renting, and it wasn't a Rzr, but a new-ish Honda Pioneer Trail. Comparatively, not the most exciting rig, but for our entire lives, we've only owned/ridden Honda utility ATVs and have absolutely loved them - they're incredibly reliable and versatile (used ours for snowplowing, hauling trailers, and just generally working around the property, but also for tons of trail riding).

Anyways, we got setup with the company, learned the logistics of running the loop, paid, and headed back to camp to load up the Pioneer. We loaded up lunch, rain coats, and sunscreen & hopped back into the rig. Unfortunately, when I went to put it into drive, the transmission wouldn't go into drive. Only Park or Reverse. Not ideal... We messed around with it for about 10 minutes, and ultimately determined something with the linkage was malfunctioning. Luckily, my dad had driven the Tacoma back to camp, so we loaded up into it and made our way back into town to notify the rental company. We caught up with the owner who followed us back to camp with his brand new, super badass Honda Talon and we helped him get the Pioneer hooked up. He was incredibly apologetic and offered us a full refund + $100 credit. Overall, a super standup guy and I'd definitely rent from him in the future. I think it was just a freak thing and we were just happy that it didn't happen to us in the middle of the trail. And anyways, we had the Tacoma, so we still had plenty of opportunity to explore.

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After all that, we decided it was too late to run the entire Alpine Loop, so we opted to run Cinnamon instead, starting from Lake City.

I've ran Cinnamon to varying degrees 4-5 times before, so I was familiar with the area, but it continues to be one of my favorite trails in all of Colorado. And I think you'll see why in the upcoming photos. The scenery is absolutely epic - from narrow shelf roads, to slow flowing streams, to massive glacial valleys, to Red Cloud & Sunshine 14,000 ft peaks - this route has everything you want in a Colorado backcountry route.

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We arrived at American Basin and enjoyed nearly panoramic views 10,000+ ft peaks. We had tons of sunshine on the drive up, but you could tell a storm was brewing over the peaks, so we had a quick lunch in the basin and packed up the truck just as the winds started to rip across the valley. As we headed down, we had intermittent sun & clouds, but it didn't rain until we reached back at camp.

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At this point in the trip, my dad and I were definitely in need of a nice, warm shower and I knew just the spot. I'd stopped into Highlander RV Campground a few times before on previous trips to Lake City and had always been incredibly impressed with their facilities and the hospitality of their family owned business. We paid and enjoyed immaculately clean & piping hot showers. It's amazing how nice a shower is after camping for a few days. A total refresher. As we were heading out, the owners of Highlander RV even invited us to the campground's weekly cookout later that evening, even though we weren't officially camping on their property. Just a testament to how well-run this business is!

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After getting freshened up, we decided to head into town for a bit of walking exploration. I also had a strong craving for a chocolate malt, so we stopped into the local ice cream shop and enjoyed a truly old fashioned ice cream.

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To close the day, we headed back to camp, made some dinner and sat around the fire before heading to bed. Another great day outdoors.

 

Thanks for sharing, Tenmile.
The red mountains and everything else looks pretty in the soft light. Love the clouds. Nice compositions, too.
Keep the pix forever. Great memories.

Ha ha… I had a similar experience renting jeep in Moab, back in 95. But I should have known, it was a rust bucket.

 

Thank you for reading and thank you so much for the kind words. I really appreciate it. I had a ton of fun photographing and doing some light editing on the photos from this trip. Been learning a lot through posting/sharing on this platform.

Haha that's tough on the jeep Hope you were able to still explore Moab that trip. A rust bucket down in Moab is a sure sign of bad maintenance lol.

 

This sounds like an incredible trip to share with your father. I definitely needed this read today. Just this week i posted this in a couple facebook groups.

"Afternoon all,
I am looking for some advice/resources on a trip to Colorado. I have seen the posts and trip reports about wheeling in Colorado in this page so i will ask for advice here. I am planning a trip to Colorado with my father. My timeline is either spring of fall of 2026. My father has always wanted to visit out west but lived an extremely selfless and fiscally conservative life and always put others first. His last personal experience was purchasing motorcycle and the ensuing trip he did over 40 years ago. Naturally, I’m a member of this page so I am not of the fiscally conservative mindset. I want to plan a trip to Colorado to visit his brother and see some of the best sights and experiences. He has a few years left of being physically healthy and able to complete this adventure. We would plan on spending 14 days in Colorado and camping most of it. I would like to run the alpine loop and hit cinnamon, engineer, black bear, ophir, etc. I am slowly building my 3rd gen tacoma for the trip. I have an offroad camper but am aware some areas don't allow a trailer.
What are the must sees for Colorado for on offroad/off grid trip. We are going to spend a few days near Denver and the rest of the time in the southwest corner.
I've been to Colorado on a self-guided backcountry hunting trip and am comfortable with being self sufficient, using paper maps, no cell service, etc.
What are some good resources for planning this trip, routes, locating campsites, etc. I already having all the camping gear to go as basic and light as possible or go fully equipped and comfortable.
Is late spring or early fall better? i know snow melt affects passes being open and access to camping.
Any other feedback would be greatly appreciated."

 

Dude hell yes, sounds like an incredible trip! I’ve got tons of information I’m happy to share - from our entire itinerary (I know I haven’t written posts for all our days, but we did almost exactly what you’re hoping to do with your dad - running engineer pass, etc) to books I use to plan my trips, tips and tricks on finding campsites, keeping costs low, gear to bring etc. I can work on getting some materials pulled together for you and would even be happy to hop on a call and discuss too if helpful. Feel free to DM me if you wanna chat on the phone.

 

Day 4: Lake City > Animas Forks > Silverton via the Iconic Engineer Pass

For our fourth day, the agenda was to take one of Colorado’s most epic historical passes - Engineer Pass - from Lake City, pit stop at Animas Forks to see one of Colorado’s best preserved historical mining towns, and make our way down Silverton and eventually take the Million Dollar Highway to Ridgeway.

Engineer Pass is part of the “Alpine Loop Back Country Byway”, which is a 63-mile network of four-wheel drive roads that connect Lake City, Ouray, and Silverton. These roads traverse through the epic San Juan mountain range, peaking at heights up to 12,800 feet while showcasing old mines, ghost towns, and tons of natural beauty.

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Originally, these were paths used by Native Americans who lived the region. In the 1880s, these trails were widened and used to access silver, gold, lead, and zinc mines (more on this history later), but today they serve as incredible avenues for exploring Colorado’s great backcountry.

To start the day, we cooked up a delicious, hearty breakfast, cleaned up camp, and loaded the truck to head out.

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Since we had already ran Cinnamon Pass the prior day, we opted to head directly up Engineer Pass, which begins almost immediately on the backside of Lake City. The road begins very wide & nicely graded and and quickly drops you to the first point of interest along the route - the Ute-Ulay Mine.

First, I want to provide some true, but sad history about this mine. Miners first made their way into the San Juan Mountains in 1860–61, but it was not until 1869 that valuable minerals were discovered and not until 1871–72 that mine development took place. The Treaty of 1868 put the San Juan Mountains within a Ute reservation that encompassed almost the entire western third of Colorado. Although off limits to non-Indians, prospectors and miners entered the region. The growing mining activity drew the attention of the Utes, who were unhappy about the incursions but not openly hostile.

Eventually, the Ute-Ulay mine was staked in 1874 after the Brunot Agreement between the Nuche (Ute) and the US government was established in 1873. The agreement took 3.7 million acres from the Ute Reservation in western Colorado. Over the next decade, the Utes were eventually force-marched to Utah in 1881 (source). I highlight these facts not to start an argument, but to highlight the true history of the area. Although it’s cool to explore these spaces today, in my opinion, it’s important to remember how the land we all call home was at one point taken from others & that we have the responsibility & privilege to share, value, respect, and protect these now public lands.

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After exploring the mine, we hopped back into the truck and made our way further into Engineer Pass. The road steadily gains elevation, but remains very easy albeit rough at times. The views are absolutely stunning. It’s definitely worth hoping out of your vehicle to grab pictures throughout.

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After about an hour of driving, we were getting close to reaching the summit of the pass. The views of the surrounding San Juans from the top are absolutely incredible. It’s literally 360 degrees of world class mountains as far as your eye can see, with 14,000 ft peaks dotted throughout.

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After snagging some much needed “prove it” pictures at the top, we started making our way down towards Animas Forks. As we descended, the road gets narrow and has a lot of exposure. The exposure paired with the two way traffic and a narrow road is not a great combination for inexperienced drivers (of which there are many given there are tons of rental outfits in the surrounding areas) OR a poorly maintained rig. Having a mechanical failure on this section of the road would put you in a bad place. My dad - not a fan of heights - didn’t love this portion, haha.

As we meandered down to lower elevations, we came across something spectacular. A massive flock of sheep grazing their way across the alpine meadow. My curiosity got the best of me and I immediately had to google this when we got back to service. The background to these flocks - which I had seen previously on 14er backpacking weekends - are as follows. Ranchers work with the Forest Service to obtain permits to graze their flocks on designated areas. Once permits are obtained, the ranch families drive their flocks across miles of the remote terrain, guided by riders, horses, and dogs, all moving towards the carefully managed grazing areas. The sheep rotate between multiple designated pastures as part of a grazing plan designed to sustain plant diversity and reduce fire risk. A sheep in these flocks will make this journey seven or eight times in their life, commonly knowing the route as well as their human counterparts. So. Freaking. Cool. Seeing the ranchers (sheepboys? cowboys?), their backcountry camp setup, their horses, and the free-range sheep made it feel like we were back in time.

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The following picture made me think of the old Microsoft screensavers. The sheep look copy / pasted, lol.

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After watching the sheep for a while, we climbed into the truck again and arrived at Animas Forks. Animas Forks was established in 1874 as a silver and gold mining hub and grew to a peak population of about 400 and even had general stores, saloons, boarding houses, and a post office. With its altitude of 11,200 feet, the town saw incredibly harsh winters that brought avalanches and extreme cold. In 1884, the residents even endured over 25 feet of snow & had to dig tunnels between their houses!

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All the buildings are open to walk, so my dad & I explored the incredibly well preserved site. It was really cool to get a feel of what life was potentially like back in the day living up there.

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Some detail shots of the buildings.​

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My personal favorite house was the William Duncan House, photographed below. Obviously a pretty remarkable house given the elevation and the fact the he and his wife built it themselves in their late 20s.

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After some very cool exploration, we conducted our final load-up into the truck before heading down the rest of the trail to Silverton.

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This was by far my favorite day of the trip.

 

Any updates on you & your dad's trip?

 

Love the pictures. I sent my father a detailed Colorado backcountry atlas, Colorado Funtreks and a list/route of places i had put together. I don't think he understood how serious i was. Ironically, tonight I purchased my qualifying hunting license and preference points for Colorado. No immediate plans but i told my hunting group i was already earmarking 2026 for this..
I did just buy a Scheel-Mann driver seat with Colorado trips in mind. Driving my truck long distance is killing my back.

 

Nice pix.

Thanks for sharing.

 

That's awesome! Sounds like it's coming together. That's awesome you secured you hunting license & put in your preferences. Excited to hear more about the trip once you've taken it.

 

Of course! Thanks for following along.

 

Thank you for continuing to share these great pictures.