I guess I'll get back to sharing about our Colorado trip.  The day after we visited Rocky Mountain National Park, three of us decided to tackle Red Cone.  Some of the others who suffered tie rod damage and steering stabilizer damage decided to go easy on their rigs the rest of the trip.

It took us about a 30-40 minutes to get to the trail head.  After airing down, we began the trail and it was pretty rocky at the start, a little different than what we expected but it was fun nonetheless.  We came to a pretty good sized boulder in the middle of the trail shortly into our ascent but we managed that rather easily.  The trail wound around for some time, remaining rocky until we entered a forest section which then became mostly dirt with some loose rocks.  As we made our way above the tree line, you could see the peak in the distance.

We had a pretty steep climb ahead to get to the base of the peak and that was a fund rive.  We stopped a few hundred below the top for some photo ops before making the final run to the top.  As we approached the top, a storm came in and the wind really picked up.  Some rain drops fell but nothing significant that would make the climb or descent difficult.  As we reached the very top of the peak, you could not see as you crested and Jodi freaked out thinking I was driving us off the mountain.  She had done really well until then with her fear of heights but this one didn;t go well for her.  She wound up bailing out on the plateau and we had to give her a few minutes to calm down before the real fun began.

The descent is very steep and the road has some very narrow sections.  She couldn't watch so she put her headband over her eyes and I had to just talk calmly to her as we made our way down, a cross a ridge and then down another steep descent.  Just two weeks earlier, a Jeep lost power to the engine, which in turn lost its brakes and steering and slid down the sloped trail.  He managed to keep it on the trail thankfully but he wiped out a couple signs at the bottom and tore up the side of his rig pretty good.  Fortunately we didn't have that issue but it was quite the sight to look out my window and be feet from the edge where it was pretty much straight down for a thousand feet or more.  Good thing Jodi wasn't looking.  

We all made it to the bottom safely and we continued into Montezuma to finish our day.   A steak dinner in Frisco finished off our evening followed by some drinks back at the cabin.  Next up, Wheeler Lake.