The Sheep Creek Jeep Trail
By Jerry Smith
Not long after we moved to Grand Junction, Colorado in '85, I began
exploring area Jeep trails in my ’73 CJ5 (Old Blue). As a traveling salesman at the time, my time off
from work was extremely rare and valuable.
New to Grand Junction (GJT) and seldom home, I had nearly no
local friends to find out about the area.
The answer was to take a map of the area and draw a 50-mile radius
circle around GJT and go drive ALL Jeep trails within that circle.
It took till about 2009 to be able to say I accomplished
that goal and then a little, but it’s safe to say that at one time or another,
I have traveled 98% of all Jeep trails in that circle and many beyond.
During that time frame, we (Old Blue, Happy Trails [my ’06 Rubicon]
and I) managed to find some trails in need of some TLC. Trails that Mother Nature had closed for one
reason or another were not to be ignored like most people do. In my younger and healthier years, when an
impassable obstacle presented on a Jeep trail, we simply removed or repaired
it.
To me, THAT is just part of the Jeeping experience. You see a problem and remedy it. Overcoming obstacles is part of the fun. Opening a new trail or reopening an old trail
is something few of us ever have the pleasure of… and yes, it definitely is a
pleasure. But you must find the
opportunity to do it!
Exploring every sidetrack is the way of finding old and new
opportunities. They are out there. If nothing else, look at the trails that have
been closed by land management. There
ARE possibilities of reopening them if you get creative and solve the problems
that caused the closure in the first place.
The first trail with that kind of show-stopping problems we
worked on was the Pace Lake road. The
bottom of the road showed lots of erosion damage. Tons of rock falls littered the road. Some required removal to get by, so we rolled
them into some of the deep “V” channels cut into the lower side of the road to
slow the erosion.
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| Happy Trails on Pace Lake |
Part of the trail goes through an old burn and several of
the old dead snags had blown down over the road. The tracks in the trail were common. People would drive up to the first tree blocking
the road and turn around. Between a hand
saw and the winch, we moved several trees to get to the first main obstacle.
This obstacle turned out to be a 3-foot wide gash snaking
its way down the road about 3-feet deep and 75-yards long. Trying to straddle the trench only resulted
in the first body damage to Happy Trails.
Now it was a working Jeep… not a pleasure Jeep.
Before I worked on the ditch, there was a short walk up the
trail to make sure all that work would be worth the effort. From that walk, I knew there was a big rock
fall not far up the trail, but it looked like something we could get around.
So… for the next few hours, I threw everything I could find
in that ditch. Trees, limbs, rocks,
dirt, and sweat mostly filled it in.
There was some REAL satisfaction when we drove the full length of that
thing!
At the big rock fall, taking a turn around the first kitchen
table-size rock, we started to climb the high-side bank of the road to evade
another large boulder. That would have
worked well except the rear slid over into the boulder we were trying to avoid
and broke the plastic wheel cap (the second damage to Happy Trails) on the
right rear.
After a few more trees, we finally reached the top and end
of the Pace Lake trail. The lake is on
the Utah side of the border, which is on the wrong side of the fence to the JB
Ranch. The JB Ranch has an agreement
with the Fish and Wildlife as a private hunting preserve and they are adamant
about trespassers.
** As a side note, we are working with the USFS, BLM, and a
private landowner to connect the top of the Pace Lake trail to another trail to
make a loop trail. This is going through
the Manti-La Sal Forest Planning presently. See – opportunities!! **
Next came the Calamity Mesa Loop Trail. This one had been closed for an estimated 25+
years. Calamity Mesa took some help from
two Jeep Clubs to officially open the first half of the trail. The second half was mostly just myself again. The Calamity Mesa Loop Trail is a 19-mile
loop from the trailhead to the end. If you
count the mile from the end to the trailhead, it’s 20-miles.
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| The Twisted Drop obstacle winds up your suspension. |
Calamity Mesa also has one other smaller 5-mile loop and
another trail on top of the mesa from the airstrip to an intersection with the
big loop that we reopened. There is a library full of uranium mining history in the area and some drop dead beautiful
scenery.
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| Narrow shelf roads sometimes scare people. |
People have elected to pass driving their pretty paint jobs
through this on the two trips we have lead up this trail.
Next was the Coon Hollow Jeep Trail. This was marked on BLM maps as a “Jeep trail”,
but it had not been used by full-size vehicles for many years and had grown in
tight to ATV width with four-foot tall sagebrush on both sides and had some
deep washes to deal with. It took a lot
of work to reopen Coon Hollow.
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| Coon Hollow has some difficult crawls |
Coon Hollow has become another “highlight” trail for our
annual Rock Junction event.
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| The Coon Hollow wash can be tricky |
In 2018 I was contacted by the Paonia Forest Service office
and asked it we would come and widen a Jeep trail by cutting miles of heavy
overgrown brush back. It took two trips,
but we got it done.
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| So. Beaver Mesa is steep, rocky, and eroded. |
In the fall of 2018, a nasty storm hit the upper region of
the Sheep Creek Jeep Trail. It brought
down tons of debris off the mountainside onto the road and severely eroded the
road surface. This is a common
occurrence on Sheep Creek. Once or twice
each year this trail is subject to closure by Mother Nature.
Sometime during the winter of ‘18/’19, more storm damage
added to the previous carnage and added a humungous rock (15’ tall and the
width of the road) to our problems.
Sheep Creek is part of one of the favorite trips we lead people on for
our Rock Junction event. Having it
closed was not going to make some people happy.
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| Steep and winding is Sheep Cr. |
Sunday, May 19th began as a workday to reopen the
Sheep Creek trail. We started out with a
good-size crew of eager beavers ready to move the world if necessary. In reality, they turned out to be a worthless
bunch that never moved a rock all day.
Not even one shovel full of dirt turned.
It wasn’t their entire fault, though.
While airing down at the Sheep Creek trailhead, a phone call
from Keri informed us that a crawler tractor had already been up the trail and
had removed all obstacles. Work party
disaster!
With that news, we lost Jeff and his buggy. The rest of us decided to run the trail
through to Glade Park. On our way to the
top, over the radio comes word that Luke will be riding through Granite Creek
where the word is there are “rock falls” near the “homestead”.
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| The exit from Granite Cr. is a steep, narrow, rocky shelf road |
Topping the trail, we elected to head for a meeting with
Keri somewhere along the trail toward Glade Park. She couldn’t explain her location, so we were
on a search and find mission. On the
radio, we were still hearing bits and pieces of what had been found down on
Granite Creek. The broken radio
reception didn’t sound all that bad, so we did a quick turnaround and headed
down Lost Horse Canyon on the way to Granite Creek Canyon.
After about 8-miles of travel, we stopped at the “homestead”
and glassed a pickup that could be seen on the shelf road exit from the canyon
bottom. Even with drone flyover
pictures, the overall predicament with the truck could not be determined, so up
the road we went.
Just a short walk around a corner from the pickup was a
serious rockfall blocking forward progress.
A quick look and some thoughts about it made me think we “could” move
the big rocks enough to pass, but taking the walk around the corner made the
effort fade into oblivion. Not only was
there another large rock partially blocking the road, but also a disabled
pickup with unbelievable body damage and what appeared to be a broken front
axle sat smack in the middle of the road.
Game over!
Back out through Granite Creek Canyon and Lost Horse Canyon
to the road to Glade Park.
Overall, it was a good (long) day of Jeeping. Many in the group saw some new country and
trails they had never traveled, so all was not lost. One of the Rock Junction favorite trails is
again useable and we only had one and a half casualties. I forgot to mention that Dick aired down two
tires TOTALLY. Whoops!!
This should give you some ideas of what can be done for
motorized trail access “IF” someone takes the lead and follows through. Of course, having support from other people
makes this happen easier, but that all-important “point man” is VITAL to things
like this! Are YOU that person?
One of the first things you must do is get on a first name
basis with local land managers. Being on
their speed dial is even better. You’ll
get better cooperation if they know and trust you.
One last thing… always remember when you come to a fork in
the road, Yogi said; “Take it!” That is
the first step to finding opportunities.
