UN 9166 and UN 8806 1/23
Joe set this up as a early winter hike to a few ranked peaks that shouldn't have too much snow, and it ended up being a quite popular idea with 7 people and Poudre coming along! With the long-damaged Old Flowers Road reopened(though closed seasonally) after the 2012 High Park Fire and 2013 September flooding, it would be possible to access some of the national forest west of Stove Prairie again...or at least so we thought. West of the Stove Prairie schoolhouse, the road is public although the adjacent land is private until reaching the forest service boundary. The issue was that the road was only plowed up to the Sky Corral Ranch, where the plowed snowbank blocked off the remainder of the public road followed by a closed and locked gate, accompanied by no parking signs everywhere. While I can understand the road not being plowed, the locked gate seemed like the ranch's doing(especially since the forest service has their own locked gate farther up the road) and I question their authority to place such a gate across a public road if it is actually locked by the Sky Corral Ranch. While I understand the presence of the signs as well, having both signs and locking the gate purposely prevents public access which I doubt the forest service is in favor of after spending lots of money and time to work on Old Flowers Road. I admittedly may not know the whole story and if the gate will be locked in future winters, but this wouldn't be the first time local landowners tried to police things that aren't theirs to guard.
Anyways, we decided not to tempt fate and spoke with a nearby resident who generously allowed us to park next to a garage along the road a few tenths of a mile before the ranch. We crossed the gate and circled around the ranch before reaching the forest service gate and pullout where we were originally hoping to park. There was a fair amount of snow down in the valley where the road follows a small creek, but with our hiking team we were able to switch off trailbreaking as we climbed towards our first peak. Most of our hike was in the burn area of the High Park Fire which had started just a few miles away, but the valley was still green having escaped the flames. As we climbed up to a ridge, we encountered a property line which we followed to the cornerpost. Hiking south now, we tracked down an old mine which appears on maps. Though there wasn't much to see with snow on the ground, there was at least one medium sized trench and a few tailing piles. I suspect the main mineral the miners were searching for was scheelite, which was mined at other nearby prospects along Old Flowers Road.
After leaving the mine we continued climbing before finally reaching the summit of 9166, which had two rock piles of roughly equal height, though the east pile had a small cairn and seemed a tiny bit higher. From the summit we dropped into Poverty Gulch and followed a long meadow back to the road. At the road we contoured around a hill and made our way up to the summit of 8806, which had much less snow on its south slopes than we'd seen on the rest of our route. The summit had nice views which had been opened up by fire and wind, and we were able to see many of the local peaks nearby. Dropping back to the road we intersected our old trench and were met at the ranch gate by Jim, who skipped 8806 in order to provide us with a car shuttle back to the garage.
For additional photos of our hike, visit joeandfrede.com and Jim's EveryTrails report!
Anyways, we decided not to tempt fate and spoke with a nearby resident who generously allowed us to park next to a garage along the road a few tenths of a mile before the ranch. We crossed the gate and circled around the ranch before reaching the forest service gate and pullout where we were originally hoping to park. There was a fair amount of snow down in the valley where the road follows a small creek, but with our hiking team we were able to switch off trailbreaking as we climbed towards our first peak. Most of our hike was in the burn area of the High Park Fire which had started just a few miles away, but the valley was still green having escaped the flames. As we climbed up to a ridge, we encountered a property line which we followed to the cornerpost. Hiking south now, we tracked down an old mine which appears on maps. Though there wasn't much to see with snow on the ground, there was at least one medium sized trench and a few tailing piles. I suspect the main mineral the miners were searching for was scheelite, which was mined at other nearby prospects along Old Flowers Road.
After leaving the mine we continued climbing before finally reaching the summit of 9166, which had two rock piles of roughly equal height, though the east pile had a small cairn and seemed a tiny bit higher. From the summit we dropped into Poverty Gulch and followed a long meadow back to the road. At the road we contoured around a hill and made our way up to the summit of 8806, which had much less snow on its south slopes than we'd seen on the rest of our route. The summit had nice views which had been opened up by fire and wind, and we were able to see many of the local peaks nearby. Dropping back to the road we intersected our old trench and were met at the ranch gate by Jim, who skipped 8806 in order to provide us with a car shuttle back to the garage.
For additional photos of our hike, visit joeandfrede.com and Jim's EveryTrails report!
