Location: near Bailey, CO
Trail Length: 11.7 miles
Elevation: 8,931 to 9,817 feet
Directions:
From Denver, CO drive South on US285 past Conifer, CO about 24.5 miles to CR-43 and turn right. This road is also called Deer Creek Road. Go about 6.7 miles and turn left onto Saddlestring Road. Go about 0.2 miles and bear left. On your left is a pulloff where you can air down. On your right is FR-101. Take FR-101 2.5 miles to the Slaughterhouse steel sign.
Trail Report:
The day after Christmas I met up with some people from local jeep clubs. Alec and WTF_LOL from http://www.jkcrawlers.com/ and Joe from Colorado JeepPeople (meetup.com) met in Aspen Park and drove to the trailhead together. After brief introductions, we aired down and disconnected swaybars.
Here is Alec's rig:
And Joe's:
And WTF_LOL's:
We hit the trail with out much dilly dallying, it was only 20 deg out.
Joe took this shot with me following behind him on the easy flat forest road to the actual Slaughterhouse loop's trailhead.
Here is the sign at the trailhead:
We headed out on the loop with WTF leading the way.
The snow started getting deeper right away and we were sliding around quite a bit, but the trail was still mellow, so it was good fun.
Here is a look in my new rear camera setup of Aec following behind me:
Joe playing around:
Everything was going smooth until we started down a gully where the trail hugs the side of a slope, putting you off camber. We were all having a hard time remembering to keep our tires pointed straight on the trail. Your instinct is to start steering driver's side when you starting sliding towards the passenger side. All that happens is your rear tires keep pushing and you slide the exact way you are trying to avoid! It’s tricky. Joe's rear slid around when he went through a large drift and he ended up in this tree. He suffered some body damage on his rear door and fender :(
We used Alec's winch and a snatch block on an uphill tree to pull him out enough to clear the tree and we were on the trail again. Joe was a REAL good sport about it. Joe, if any of us can help you fix your damage, let us know.
About a mile down the trail we starting hitting some even bigger drifts. We had some real strong wind up here in the hills a couple nights ago and it stripped the surrounding hills dumping all the snow down in the gulch on the trial. WTF was leading but he couldn't make it through all of them.
There was a big hill climb to get back out of the valley to trailhead. It looked pretty intimidating covered in snow.
In the end we all made it back to trailhead safe. A few more snow dumps and this will be impassable.
View from trailhead of the surrounding mountains:
