Here in Wyoming the week prior to RMM 04 was pretty soggy. Rain every day, with the ground becoming so saturated that we had standing water in our pastures. I have been so busy with work, that I hadn't even started my 404 since returning from Moab back in early April. Friday morning, I did a quick check of lubricant levels, dumped some Jerry cans into the tank, grabbed enough food to sustain me for three days, and threw my camping gear in the back of the truck.

About 10:00, Chris Longstreet and his friend Matt McAdams arrived at my house. Chris has a Belgian 404 which he bought last year to commute to the local community college here in Cheyenne. It was pouring rain when he and Matt arrived at my house. We set out for Colorado, wondering if we were going to be soaking wet all weekend.

RMM 03 was headquartered at Colorado State Park, on the west side of the Rawah Wilderness. This year, we headquartered at the Tunnel Campground, a USFS site in a narrow valley on the west side of the Rawah's. From my house, it's possible to take almost a straight line route to the RMM site, using dirt county roads. This saves only 17 miles, as opposed to taking the major highways, but it seems shorter and is certainly more intersting.

Crossing the Laramie Basin, there are quite a few low spots in the road, and due to all the rain, these low spots were full of water. We had to ford about 25 fairly large puddles,

many of which were about 50 yards long but no deeper than the middle of the tires.

As we approached the mountains, the terrain changed from flat grass land to looking very much like the area around Moab. Sandstone outcroppings,

and cliffs with water marks and the beginning signs of the creation of arches.

It was along this area that the second indication of possible vehicle problems cropped up. Chris's 404 was having trouble running on the long uphill stretches of road, and died for the second time. His batteries were also dead, so it wouldn't even turn over to try to restart. It seemed like a good time to stop for lunch, so we did. After lunch I hooked up a tow strap again and we tow started him, with no further probblems that day. The significant geologic feature in the area we stopped for lunch is called Chimney Rock, which is a standstone outcropping which towers up out of the valley floor for several hundred feet.

As we started up toward Sand Creek Pass, I spotted a cow moose off to the side of the road, near a grove of aspen.

Dropping down the west side of Sand Creek Pass, we had a pretty panoramic view of the Rawah Wilderness. Our destination was in the bottom of the valley at the base of the mountains, toward the left side of the picture. We arrived at the Tunnel Campground about two o'clock. Robert and Charlie Christensen were already there and starting to set up their big hunting tent. They told us that Bernard Gateau had just been there in his H1 Hummer, but that he was on his way to rescue someone who's car was stuck and had ended up with a broken leg in the process of trying to get unstuck. Bernard didn't return during the weekend, so I suspect he was pretty busy with his search and rescue duties.

The rain had pretty much let up, so we were able to get our tents pitched without incident.

Bob and Wiley Newsome came in about mid-afternoon in their 4WD Ford Van.

and Jon Essley arrived just about dusk.

Unfortunately, the disk in my camera must have a bad spot on it, and my picture of the Christensen's 416 and big tent can't be viewed.

Robert fired up their heating stove as the temperature cooled down and we all gathered in the big tent to eat our dinners and enjoy the warmpth. Shortly after dark, Ron DePugh and daughter, Cassidy, arrived in Ron's Suzuki Samauri. Ron had great plans to arrive in his new '98 Freightliner mog hauler, but delivery problems prevented that. His backup plan was to drive his mog, but at the point of leaving Boulder his brakes failed, so that wouldn't have been a safe trip. He and Cassidy made the trip up to the campground to say hello but didn't bring camping gear, so couldn't stay.

Shortly after Ron and Cassidy headed back down the Poudre Canyon, it started to snow. Wet, heavy snow. Darrin Fink will appreciate that, since we were at Reunimogging '97 together, when it snowed about 4". This time it was only about 1", but it was enough to seriously sag my tent. I had to shake off the slop and tighten all the stakes before going to bed.

Saturday morning dawned with bright sunshine, but clouds were drifting over, so it wasn't going to be a bright sunny Colorado day. Our group consisted of me, with Wylie Newsome as my passenger in my 404 hardcab, Chris Longstreet and Matt McAdams in Chris's Belgian 404, Jon Essley and his two dogs in his Belgian 404, and Robert and Charlie Christensen and Bob Newsome in the Christensen's 416 DOKA. My first choice for a trail ride was the Green Ridge Road (Trail #4 in the Wells Guide to Colorado Backroads and 4-Wheel Drive Trails, Vol. 2). I have to say here that during my reconnoitering in May and early June, I ran into many trails which were closed due to deep snow still in the higher elevations. The Arapahoe National Forest map indicates many trails aren't opened until mid-June, in order to protect the trail surface. Green Ridge Road was still closed.

So, we dropped back to choice number two, which was Seven Mile Road 225 (trail #2 in the trails book). I had done a map recon of this trail, with the addition of some other Forest Service roads to make it a longer trip. This required a 26 mile trip from the Tunnel campground, down Colorado Hwy 14 along the Cache la Poudre River. The trail starts within a mile of the community of Glen Echo. It was raining again, but not too bad. A short way up the trail, we came to a gate, which was closed. Foiled again! This was pretty disappointing, as we'd dropped over 2000' in elevation and I wasn't looking forward to the long grind back up the highway to the campground. We collectively decided to take county roads north and west, and basically make a scenic loop through the mountains back to the campground.

After ascending about 1400 vertical feet, I noticed a Jeep road (FS171) with an open gate, leading off to the west, so we thought we'd try it. This was more like it. Not difficult, but a 4WD road, nonetheless. After a little over two miles, we came upon one of the waypoints in my GPS which corresponded with the planned trail for the day. Apparently, only the first portion of the trial, which came up through a valley with several stream crossings, was closed. Things were looking up. About lunch time, we came to a point in the trail where it looped back in the general direction we had come, so it was a good time to stop for lunch.

I spotted a USFS truck up ahead, so walked up to to find out if we were likely to run into any more closure gates. The lady rangers were very nice and verified that the route I had planned to take was indeed open. They had never seen Unimogs before and asked if they were street legal.

The Jeep road returned to the main county road, but about a mile further up, another Jeep road (FS517) turned off to the west, and this was the one we wanted. It started off easily enough, but as we progressed, it got narrower, steeper, and rockier. There were several spots where leaning trees made it kind of a squeeze to get through.

The 404's got through okay, but the 416 DOKA with it's rack had a tight fit.

As we got higher in elevation, we encountered some of the previous night's snow, which made the trail kind of muddy and the rocks slick. At one passage, the trail caused the trucks to slide a little bit to the right, which caught Jon Essley against a tree. When he tried to back up, the tree hooked his front bumper and bent it a little bit.

Here's a another shot of the 416 squeezing under a leaning tree.

The only other motorized vehicles we saw on this trail were some ATV's and a few dirt bikes. There was one jacked up mini pickup, parked along the side of the trial. I asked him which way he was going, and he replied he'd been headed the direction we were going, but didn't think he was going to risk it. This was at the base of a steep, rocky hill which would probably have done some serious damage to his truck. The Unimogs handled it easily, I'm glad to say. There was one point where a big step was kind of wet and the 416 just couldn't get traction to make it up, so out came the winch for a little assist.

Just about a mile from the end of the difficult portion of the trail, Chris's 404 died again and couldn't be restarted. Batteries were dead, no sound from the electric fuel pump, and the hand throttle had broken. This happened on a steep, narrow portion of the trail, just before two big trees which were just barely far enough apart for a mog to squeeze through. I backed up and hooked my snatch strap to him.

and dragged him between the narrow trees and on until the trail joined a more maintained section of road. We tried pull starting, but to no avail. About 3000' further along, a better road offered a way to get back out to a major county road, so we figured the best thing would be to take it and forego the remainder of the planned trail. It was 40 road miles back to the campground at this point. It was about 4:30 in the afternoon so we figured, not knowing what all might be wrong with Chris's truck, that it would be best to tow him all the way and work on it when we got back to camp.

It was a slow trip, but we made it without incident, arriving back at the campground shortly after 7:00 p.m. Ron Miller was there.

having driven up from Ft. Collins to join us for the evening. Ron's truck is for sale, by the way. If you're interested you can contact him at .

Chris and Matt pulled the engine cover and discovered that when the hand throttle cable broke, it had wedged the throttle open on the carburetor, causing it to be unresponsive to the foot throttle, which explained why we couldn't get it to run when pull starting. Had we realized that at the time, we could have avoided the long tow. Oh, well. A lesson learned. With all the other factors of dead batteries and no sound from the electric fuel pump, the true problem wasn't readily apparent.

We were all starving, so dinner was quickly prepared and wolfed down. We socialized in the Christensen's tent for a while, but heads were nodding by 9:00 so everyone drifted off to their respective sleeping bags.

No trail ride was planned for Sunday. We had a casual breakfast and went about breaking up camp. About 10:30, just as we were finishing up, Jay Couch and his girlfriend arrived in a yellow 406 with a front end loader attached, followed by Matt Bauman in a Suzuki Samauri.

More Unimog talk took up the next hour. Jay and Matt had camping gear with them, but figured they'd just try to do some trail riding and then head back to Denver/Greeley respectively.

There are two Tunnel campgrounds: the one where we stayed, and another one on the other side of the mountain along Highway 14. The "tunnel" is a waterway dug through the mountain, which allows water from the Laramie River to be diverted to the Cache la Poudre. The tunnel is two miles long and completely dug by hand. There is a big gate at the head end, which controls the amount of water flow. Every year the gate is closed, shutting off the flow, so the custodain can walk the tunnel to inspect for cave-ins. It's only about 4' high and I'm sure the rocks are slippery. This final picture was taken just above the entrance to the tunnel, showing the approach of the waterway.

When we walked back to the road where the mogs were parked, I downloaded the trail waypoints from my laptop to Jay's and Matt's GPS so they'd have a guide to follow our previous day's trail in reverse order. They assured me they'd let me know how it turned out. I haven't heard from either of them, so they may be stranded up there somewhere.

After Jay and Matt turned off, the rest of us headed back toward Wyoming. Bob and Wylie Newsome had left earlier, in order to get Wylie to an appointment in Casper. We stopped for lunch along the way, and then Jon Essley peeled off the road to head for his cabin south of Laramie. Most of the water hazards along the road had dried up, but there were still several which had to be navigated. I dropped off at my house about 3:00, and the Christensens, and Chris and Matt continued on into Cheyenne. The rain came back Sunday night and continued on through Monday. It was nice enough to lighten up during the outing, so it turned out to be another successful RMM for those of us who were there.

Respectfully submitted,

Kent Drummond
1963 404 Hardcab
1971 Haflinger (in a couple weeks