Day 11 CDR-Sept 5

We broke camp and headed south from Tiger Road. We immediately started climbing toward Mosquito Pass. The first couple of miles were easy and it almost lulled us into thinking it would go fast. No so!!

When we were 5 ½ miles from the summit, we started hitting the rough part of the “road”. This trail required at a minimum of 4 wheel drive in low range, a lifted vehicle with 32” or larger tires and some experience with extremely rocky trails.

The trail was barely wide enough for one vehicle so occasional pulloffs were necessary account of meeting other vehicles going the other way. A full sized vehicle would probably not be able to navigate this trail to the pass from the Breckenridge side. The pulloff areas were barely wide enough for two Jeeps and someone had to get close to the edge and look down a very long ways to the bottom. Sometimes the pucker factor was quite high.

At the Summit we paused for photos and then headed down toward Leadville on the west side. The trail wasn’t much better going down.

On one very rough and narrow switchback, Matt’s trailer rolled onto its top. It took us a while to get it righted so we could assess the damage. The minor amount of damage is testament to how well Matt built that trailer.

It was on to Leadville and up over Cottonwood Pass, crossing the divide for the second time today. From there we drove through the town of Tincup and found a camsite about 5 miles from there. Tomorrow we will tackle Cumberland Pass.