The Alpine Loop

The Alpine loop is one of the most stunning drives that can be done in a properly prepared off-raod vehicle. Since the trails are longer and more spread appart we will be doing several loops each day; it's really hard to break this run into specific days. We will be on the trails from Monday thru Friday (24-28)

The work-in-progress plan:

Because direction matters there's no "loop" that you can really do, so I'm going to break this into the runs we need to do.

The Alpine Loop

Imogene Pass

Ophir, Hurricane, Back Bear Passes

I believe this will be the order we do these in; it's the most sensical route with very little back-tracking. There's no real schedule; we have 5 days to do these 3 routes. But we'll be hitting all the hightlights basically in this order:

Poughkeepsie Gulch
The Alpine Loop
Imogene Pass
Ophir Pass
Hurricane Pass
Black Bear Pass
Loads of old mines
Alpine Lakes
General Alpine EPICNESS!

Black Bear Pass

Ok, so this one needs some extra notes. First off, if you have a fear of heights I would suggest you skip this one and meet up with us in Telluride. This pass is a series of a narrow shelf road and tight switchbacks; it's actually been widened considerably since it was constructed in the late 1800s.

As mentioned, the swithback's are tight; even us 2-door nerds will have to do multi-point turns (unless you have an Atlas T-Case with Dig). Unless you've already done this trail, you've never done switchbacks like these; the drop-offs are legendary and will end you and your rig if you go over. There is no turning around; this is a one-way-trail; once you commit you're descending all the way to Telluride.

If you do decide to do this run and you turn into a little bitch half-way down (this includes me) it will all be recorded for the world to see. Also, I claim no responsibility for injury or descruction of your vehicle; everyone who does this run does so on their own accord.

Here is a video that is good to show you what to expect: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PvC-uPXnI7M

Camping

We will camp as we go; I have many campsites marked off in OnX so we will randomly setup; there is no definitive plan to the camping.

Fuel

The way I have planned this we won't be doing any super-long trail runs without stopping in Silverton or Telluride. So there will be stops to top-up our main tanks. I would suggest brinking externals and keeping them topped up; but I really can't see them being needed.