On Tue, January 24, 2006 9:37 am, Josh Battles said:
>
> It looks like there's some sort of paved/packed dirt road that leads up to
> the top, you think it's nice enough for us altitude challenged folk to make
> it up there too? I'd definately like to be in on the group photos.
It's hard to say. The only photo we've been able to find is this one:
http://tinyurl.com/akjb4 You can see the road coming in from the left side of
the picture right near the "west" label, going up a couple of switchbacks, and
the clearing at the top. At least we're pretty sure that's it.
It would be pretty cool to get as many Dakotas up there as we can for photos.
You could always try it and see what the road is like, no shame in turning
around and going back if it gets too rough.
The only counter argument I can think of is that Jon and I were talking about
combining the trip up to Dakota Hill with a full day of off-roading. The hill
is quite a ways north of the campground. Jim estimates about 2.5 hours to get
up there, but then once we've traveled up there and taken all of our pictures,
what do we do with the rest of the day? If we were going to go off-roading,
you could find a safe place to park your truck and go along as a passenger,
but that would kill my idea of using the trail system to actually travel back
to camp.
It's near the Denver area, so we had thought about combining it with something
else around Denver as long as we were going to be up there. But, we couldn't
really think of anything else that would be interesting. We're already
planning on doing the Coors tour on Wednesday morning, and heading over to Red
Rocks for lunch (assuming we'll be able to get in that day) and then Bandimere
in the afternoon and evening. It makes sense to combine all of that stuff
together since it's all located within a few minutes drive. That's already a
full day, I don't think we could squeeze Dakota hill in there anywhere unless
we didn't care about showing up at the track right as it opens.
As I mentioned above, the second idea we had was to leave camp in time to get
up to Dakota Hill for lunch, have lunch and take pictures on the top, and then
spend the rest of the day taking a series of 4x4 roads and trails to get back
to camp. Unfortunately, that would necessarily exclude any 2wd trucks. We
could split up, but that would depend on whether you'd rather head back to
camp in a group of 2wd trucks, or ride along as a passenger for some
off-roading.
The only other thought I have is that maybe the rest of that day could be
spent on scenic back-country highways, maybe stopping in at some of the
tourist traps like Breckenridge, etc. Possibly Walt, Adam, Mike and anyone
else with a big rig could take the opportunity to go smash their trucks on
some boulders while the rest of us are doing the touristy thing. I'm not sure
if they'd be interested in those areas or not.
Any thoughts or suggestions?
-- Jason Bleazard http://drazaelb.blogspot.com Burlington, Ontario his: '95 Dakota Sport 4x4, 3.9 V6, 5spd, Reg. Cab, white hers: '01 Dakota Sport 4x4, 4.7 V8, Auto, Quad Cab, black
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