Run west of Monument this weekend?

[Nate]

Me and Coonburger are looking at doing something west of monument this weekend. there appears to be a few trails in this area. anyone interested?

[Coonburger]

Maybe a Illinois gulch run? I see that it has not been run in a coons' age. Feel free people to chime in with your ideas, comments , concerns.

[Zukrider]

whats the desired difficulty level? cause liberty is a bad ass trail, total bucket list.

[Coonburger]

The desired difficulty level is probably something where the majority of the club can do but still something harder than LHC and Yankee hill. Maybe something that hasn't been run to death; know what i mean?

[Coonburger]

either way though iam running somthing this weekend just would like to do it with some people is all

[4Runninfun]

There isn't much of anything that is more than a dirt road west of monument. There are some washout sections but thats really about it. There is Illinois Gultch a bit farther on the woodland park side but as has been discussed before it's a lot of dirt roads for one small obstacle.

[Brody]

You have a lot of trails around there, but like Jon said, the difficulty level is really on the low end. Most of the trails are north of the Rampart Range Road and Mt Herman junction, and almost anything that has any kind of difficulty is going to be on your right. FS 323/324 for a loop back to Rampart if you take the left turn at the T junction and there are a lot of side roads/spurs that dead end at ridge tops. Going right at the T also dead ends, but is a bit entertaining.

FS 322 takes you down to Palmer Reservoir where that dead ends. That is Balanced Rock in Well's book. Most of the roads/trails in that area are passable in a regular pick up truck if they are dry and free of snow. I have been doing a lot of rock climbing in that whole area since the late 80s and have driven almost all of these roads in regular 2WD cars, including a Honda Civic, to give you an idea of the difficulty level. Of course, I had to rally the Honda a bit, but none of these are hard.

Illinois Gulch is basically a disappointment, both in terms of the tedious driving to get to the "obstacle" and the size of the "obstacle", about 150 feet square. Not too bad if you have never been there before, but don't make this the 'destination' trail.

It will help to have a topo map of the area as a lot of these trails aren't even mentioned in Well's trail guides.

[Nate]

I just thought i would throw it out there. I didnt know what was over there but i knew that the weather would be great. But by what everyone is saying, it must not be worth it. So up Bill Moore Lake I go.