Brand new thread to document Scooby_do getting his offroad cherry popped. In a lot of deep snow! This is gonna take me a while so be patient, I'll do it in sections since I'm at work.
Scooby - you better chime in here with your side of the story!
First, scouted the area EARLY saturday morning (hit the start of the real trail at sunrise). Plenty of snow, but not too terrible. Chains handled it well, I turned around about when I got here. Had to work at 11am so couldn't risk getting stuck.
Noted good places to turn around, weather was beautiful but cold (didn't get above about 18 degrees). That was all fine and dandy, till it rained all night in town Saturday night, which meant more snow up in the hills. DOH! Well, so much for scouting, this was gonna be a fly by wire trip!
Met up with Scooby in Loveland Sunday around 10:15, had a blast tearing up the twisties to get up to the start of the trail. Ok, he did more tearing than I did, my ATs will only hold so well on dry pavement. Definitely made me jealous for a turbo as I see him keeping up with me with ease on roads he's never been on. Then did some nice drifting on the 10 miles of grated dirt/gravel road. That was a hoot. Thank heavens for rally armor mud flaps, but I'm sure I was still tossing up alot of pebbles into Scooby's face. Hit the trailhead at ballard road, had some fun tooling around on the lower trails. Not much snow (no need for chains, even for Scooby and his "snow tires" which proved to be not so great in the snow...), weather was beautiful. Sunny, upper 20's. I was aware of the storm that was gonna roll in, but for the time being things were perfect!
Head back to ballard road, keep heading up the mountain which of course means more snow!