Colorado Vacation - 2004

Day 2 -  More Off-Roadin' With Pop

Friday, August 27th

Hancock Ghost Town, Hancock Pass, Alpine Tunnel, Palisades

Page 2

 (click thumbnails for full size picture)

This is the only remaining structure. It used to be the town saloon. Once the roof fails, things start to degrade in a hurry up here.	Old mining building down the road from Hancock proper. Looks like it was re-roofed at some time, you can see the difference in condition.
End of the previous building, showing the mine tailings. Tailings are the pile of materials that did not contain ore, dumped outside the mouth of the mine.	Another gated mine shaft, right next to the building shown in the previous two pictures. The water flowed from the entrance at a fairly high rate.
A shot of the Explorer, showing how the road condition is beginning to change. Lots of loose, softball sized rocks. The pictures also do not give you an indication of the steepness of the grades being driven.	Here's Pop, scouting a particularly nasty section of large rocks, washouts and general nastiness. We didn't want to get stuck, or break anything.
Another gnarly section, this time with water. That makes things kinda "greasy", in addition to the usual craters and soccer ball sized rocks.	Pop's bone-stock Explorer really surprised me. I was worried about ground clearance and the stock tires. Turns out, it preformed very well in everything we threw at it.
Top of Hancock Pass, 12,125 ft. Also straddling the continental divide. If you look close, you will see ice pellets on the ground. We didn't sit here too long, we decided below treeline was where we needed to be.	Another shot from the top of Hancock Pass. The road down the other side of the pass was very narrow, with lots of loose rock. We even had to make a three point turn in one particularly sharp hairpin turn.