T-Dubing/Clearing Red Mountain Gulch Road and some more views of Lake San Cristobal

June 7, Sunday

Today I would ride up the nearby Red Mountain Gulch "Road", a county road, to see what I could see.  It would end up being a bit more work than I'd figured on!

But first, a shot of a big grove of Aspen Trees on Hinsdale County Road 56 from Saturday evening as I rode about fruitlessly for a good sunset spot:

 County Road 56, steep one.  Closed for road work so didn't go

past this point.

Red Mountain Gulch Road is a 4WD recommended road as it starts steep, rocky and rutted right off its junction with Hinsdale County Road 30.  Yagi of course had no issues transporting me up and the only times we stopped were to clear the way of fallen trees from yesterday's wind storm.

The first two obstacles were so inconsequential I didn't even take pictures.  I did start taking pictures with fallen tree #3 though:

 Not much, easy drag over to the side of the trail.

The next obstacle tree was much bigger and thicker of branches!  No way I was going to move it so instead I spent some time removing the branches underneath the trunk; creating a small tunnel to push Yagi through:

Further up the trail, it was a fallen Aspen Tree which blocked the way.  I ended up breaking off and removing the top most branches, some dragging of the main trunk, creating a cleared path to ride Yagi through:

  Before

 After

A little further on, I cam to a good picture taking point along the trail.  Leaving Yagi trail side, I walked a bit further onto the bare rock strewn slope for this shot:

More riding and another big Pine Tree presenting an obstacle.

No way to tunnel underneath like the last pine tree so instead I was able to break off and remove the thinner branches at the top of the tree, creating a narrow path through which I was able to ride Yagi past the tree:

Almost to the top, I came upon the final set of obstacles.  The ones that would end up stopping me, two fallen Aspen trees.

I went to work, thinking I'd remove the first thinner tree so I could then try and guide Yagi up and over the lowest portion of the thicker tree trunk:

Hard to tell in the picture but the remaining trunk was diagonal across the trail and no way to move it, too heavy and the top was wedged between two other tree trunks anyways.  I tried bumping Yagi's front tire on the trunk but no joy.  It couldn't get a grip on the Aspen's smooth bark and I wasn't about give it a lot of throttle to try to overcome it!

Had I been with other riders, there was a very sketchy way around the tree trunk on the right but the potential to drop the motorcycle on a sloping slick surface was too much for me today.

So I declared victory, turned around and started making my way back down the trail.

Here's another view of the pine tree obstacle where I had to create a small tunnel under the trunk to slip Yagi through while holding onto her on foot:

That wind storm yesterday, sure caused issues on this road, I imagine the road crews of Hinsdale County will be busy this coming week as I think this road wasn't the only one now sporting fallen tree obstacles!

Some views on the way down:

Back safely on County Road 30, I rode it into Lake City to get some groceries.  Having passed it several times, I finally stopped to get a picture of the big fish at the town's gas station:

Not sure what the idea of the fish is.

Then I headed back towards Lake San Cristobal for some pictures of the wind swept lake.  Yep, it was windy today as well but not as bad as yesterday.

 View along Hinsdale County Road 33

The small island on the right, below, is linked by a small bridge to the larger hill shaped peninsula of land which forms part of the lake's marina.  I believe the bigger mound is called Texas Point.  It's for sale as I type this, for a measly 1.5 Million.

Rest of the day was spent blogging, processing pictures and just relaxing.  I'll be displacing on Monday back towards the Leadville Area.