A whole week off!

Actually, a whole week plus two days. That’s what Berck gets for winter vacation. Berck’s mom came to visit for first half of it, but that still left five days to do whatever we wanted. A road trip? Or just driving up into the mountains and camping? The Rocky Mountains were our oyster.

Unfortunately, the Miata’s master brake cylinder started leaking, as Berck noticed (as he is wont to do, staring at the engine with the hood up, waiting for things to go wrong). The parts got here on Thursday, so we spent the next two days violating our tenant agreement not to work on cars in the apartment parking lot.

On Friday, Berck broke the front right brake caliper trying to get the hydraulic bleeding valve out. A replacement is supposed to arrive this coming Thursday. We’re not sure how we’re both going to get to where we need to be this week with only one car with working brakes.

That still left three days. Road tripping was out, but we could at least take Arthur into the mountains. We loaded camp gear up (packing a pick-up is so easy) on Saturday morning and headed up Gold Camp Road.

This mountain road provides a direct route through Pike National Forest from Colorado Springs to Cripple Creek (though going on the paved roads up through Ute Pass to Woodland Park on US 24, then south is actually faster). Theodore Roosevelt called it “the trip that bankrupts the English language.” It was originally built as a railway for $1.8 million, opening in 1901. In 1924 a guy named W.D. Corley outbid one of Colorado Springs’ patriarchs Spencer Penrose (who made his fortune from Cripple Creek gold) at a bankruptcy auction and turned it into a toll road. In 1939 it was open to free, two-way traffic.

Only parts of the road are actually wide enough for two vehicles to pass (as we found out this morning, but more about that later). In 1988 one of the tunnels near the Springs collapsed, and an 8 and 1/2 mile stretch of Gold Camp Road has been closed ever since. So we actually started our journey on Old Stage Road, which begins in a Broadmoor neighborhood clinging to the side of Cheyenne Mountain and then just keeps going. There aren’t any signs that say, “This way for amazing panoramas, impressive rock formations, and great overlooks.”

Arthur complained a bit about going so far uphill, but he managed quite well. We took a side “road” off to the north at one point. Parts of the double-rutted way were so slanted we were worried about rolling down the hill sideways. We came to a meadow that looked like a nice place to camp (to me), especially since we couldn’t go any further up what looked like an impassable grade (a challenge to Berck). I got out of the truck, wanting no part in this display of testosterone, but I needn’t have worried. Arthur went a couple of feet and no more.

There wasn’t any water in the meadow, so we went back on the main road and continued west. We eventually came to a well-graded road going straight north. It was also very steep. Since Arthur’s parking brake is useless on such a grade, Berck thought it would be a good idea to back into the side of the mountain to check the burning smell worrying us from beneath Arthur’s hood. Note that this is, in fact, NOT a good idea. Arthur’s right rear wheel was now stuck in the loose gravel in the dip between the road and the mountain side. And when Berck tried to rock him out, Arthur’s rear bumper bent as his weight crashed back into rock. We were also facing straight toward the other side of the road, which ended in a cliff dropoff, so even if we got free, what was going to keep us from just keeping on going.

I told Berck he is the luckiest idiot I know, because every time he gets a car stuck by doing something stupid, someone comes by immediately and pulls us out (except for that rental car in Chile, where we had to spend a couple of hours digging the Hyundai out off its perch on a pile of volcanic rocks). Right then a couple of Jeeps drove up. The guy in the front Jeep looked very happy to have the opportunity to do something useful with his. He pulled right in front of us without a word, parked, pulled out a strap with a hook at each end, and hooked the two vehicles together. His buddy got out and yelled, “I told you we came up here for a reason today!”

“You’re lucky we came by,” First Jeep told us, “Aren’t too many more people coming by here today.” He and Berck put their vehicles in gear, and the Jeep pulled forward slowly. The strap became taut, then stretched, then stretched even more, becoming impossibly long. Arthur jumped out of his trap, and we were free.

We thanked the Jeeps and let them continue ahead of us. Arthur started having a really hard time going uphill. It wasn’t the going uphill that was the problem; it was the amount of uphill to go. A couple of times, Berck had to reverse to the next comparatively flat area to get up some speed to keep going.

Eventually, we came to the end of the line. This beautiful road continues for miles and miles, but it’s an access road built to reservoirs for the Water Department, not for campers like us. We turned around at the gate and went back half a mile or so to a nice flat area in a valley by a stream. Flat ground, plenty of water, lots of privacy (except for the Jeeps, who played around on the 4-wheel drive trails near the gate for a while before passing our tent on the way home) … it was perfect.

I gathered firewood (a task made more difficult by all of the other previous campers who had thought the same thing we did), having to climb up steep hills and dragging down whole, dead trees to make the trip worth my while. Berck erected the tent, but we’d forgotten the hatchet, so he had to pound the titanium tent pegs into the rock hard ground (emphasis on rock) with a stone, caveman-style. He could only get them in about a quarter of the way, but it was apparently enough, as we discovered.

I built a fire, and Berck heated Stagg chili on the propane camp stove someone left for us in a bear-proof cabinet in Yosemite on our honeymoon. We survived mainly on Stagg chili, Campbell’s Chunky soup, salteens, cheddar cheese, peanut butter, oranges, and Country-Tang on that trip. I’d brought all of that (except the Country-Tang…we have a water purifier now) plus ramen, bacon, and biscuit mix I made before we left and put in a Zip-Lock bag. I had prepared for five days away, so we had enough food to last a week.

We sat by the fire, trying to keep on the windward side of the blustery gusts that kept coming from all directions. You know it’s cold when you have to move the beer closer to the fire so it won’t freeze. When the wood was all gone, we retired to the tent. It’s always amazing how warm our tent gets with the two of us inside, no matter how cold it gets outside. Inside our sleeping bags was even warmer. Soon I was asleep on my down pillow (being able to throw as much stuff as you want in the back of a pick-up is awesome!).

“Are we going to get stuck up here?” asked Berck some time later. Huh? “Can’t you hear the snow?” No? “I suppose you can’t hear the fireworks either?” I pulled my head out of my down sleeping bag…can’t hear anything in there. Every New Year’s Eve, they shoot fireworks off the top of Pikes Peak. We were about five miles away from the summit, as the crow flies. I made Berck zip open the front door to see if we could see any of them. The wind had picked up and whipped the loose fly violently. Sheep Mountain was in the way, but we could sure hear the fireworks, something you can’t down in the Springs.

Getting stuck seemed very improbable. But even if we did, we had plenty of food and water and plenty of firewood, if I were willing to hike for it, and we were warm and dry. I rolled over and went back to sleep, letting Berck worry about the light sleet hitting the side of the rainfly.

Morning light came, but it was cold. The wind was blowing hard, but Berck had staked the tent well, and nothing rattled in the wind. We were secure and warm in our sleeping bags. Finally, we got up and dressed and exited our cozy cocoon. It was so cold and windy. We decided against cooking breakfast and just packed everything up and started the drive back home. It gets windy and cold at 10,000 feet.

Going down, we realized just how impressive Arthur had been going uphill all that way. Berck had to keep him in first gear most of the way down our forest service road. Back on Gold Camp Road, I marveled again at the rock that had to be cut through to make a smooth path. The railway didn’t bother making those cut-throughs very wide.

We rounded a bend in one of the narrow, man-made canyons right as black Jeep came barrelling around the other side. Berck hit the brakes, but the other guy side-swiped past us in an impossibly narrow space…possibly climbing the rock wall? I heard the thump of him hitting us, but Arthur didn’t budge and inch. We both stopped and got out to look at the damage. Amazingly, Arthur only suffered a small dent and some lost paint to his front left fender. The Jeep’s side had a long streak of purple, and its rear view mirror was scattered in small pieces in the dust. I think it was mostly the other guy’s fault…he could have stopped if he hadn’t been going so fast…but that sort of thing is impossible to prove. But the truth of the matter was that neither vehicle was badly hurt (and both had plenty of other battle scars won previously). So Berck and the guy agreed that they were about even and shook hands. We continued on our way.

Further down the road, we were passed by dozen of motorcycles, the first of which had a sidecar and ran us off into the cliff face that formed our side of the road. Fortunately, there were some shrubs growing there that simply realigned our left mirror. “What did you want me to do?” Berck demanded when I informed him, rather loudly, that we were driving into a cliff, “Kill a motorcyclist?!”

We came home, and Berck took a shower. I put my sleeping bag in the wash (I tried to stuff it by resting it against Arthur…the ground would have been cleaner). I made up the biscuit mix and brewed some coffee. After eating, we crawled into our nice, soft bed and took a nap.

We still have one more day left.