I hope this is the right place for this post, But i live in wichita, ks and im planning a trip to RM state park for me and my wife in our xj. we will be going mid may and was curious if anyone knew any good places to wheel, camp, and sight see. We will be making a few stops to longs peak, grand lakes, and deer ridge area. Anyone have any other places in 75 mile range of those areas we should check out? We will go going for 7 days. My jeep will be modified a little bit by then. Rustys 6.5 long arm, 33x12.5x15 kuhmo mt's, winch, and most other necessities. any other needed mods please post lol, im a mudder and never been to the mountains. Any help is greatly appreciated

 

Anyone?

 

There are a couple good trails near allenspark which is between deer ridge and longs peak.
http://www.traildamage.com/trails/index.php?id=174

I'd take a ride into Estes and mess around there for a while, bunch of elk in that area, although I don't suspect they'd be around in May, couple good places to eat. Stanley Hotel. Couple trails around Estes too. You planning on camping out or staying somewhere? Meeker park or Estes are the only places I know of to stay in that general area, here's Meeker http://meekerparklodge.com/. If you make it down the hill to Lyons, Oscar Blues is a great place to eat and get beer. CO has a history of ridiculous fire bans. Check those, else you can camp (with a fire) basically anywhere in the national forest. If there is a fire ban, you might be able to still have a fire at camp dick. I am unsure if fires in rocky mountain national park are banned with the rest of them since there are designated campsites there also, check here: http://www.nps.gov/romo/index.htm

 

@mr white Thanks for the heads up on fire bans. I would have never thought about that until i got there haha. Looking over the list of mods i'm doing do any others come to mind that would be deemed necessary for the area?

 

Unhook the swaybar on the trail. The trails are also real rocky, most people air down the tires to soften up the ride, I have a portable compressor that I use to air them back up. Lockers are also a good idea, but the winch with tree straps and other tow straps should get you by. There are a bunch of decent trails near allenspark and estes on traildamage, I'd look at some of the ones that are a 3-4 rating or less if it's your first time wheeling this type of terrain. Depending on how much snow we get, some of the higher trails will still be impassable or closed through to late June, some even in July (kingston peak trail didn't open till mid july this year, I went around june last year and it still had probably 15ft of snow on it in a couple areas). The weather is also very unpredictable, it can drop down to 30s and 40s at night even in May, it can rain at a moments notice. I was just up in the mtns this last weekend and it was down to about 25 deg or so at 9k ft over night, but it was about 80 during the day.

If you want someone to wheel with, post up here before you go, if it's a weekend and I'm not busy I'll probably go, if not someone else likely will.

This site shows most of the popular trails and when they open:
http://bushducks.com/tripreps/passopen.htm

Middle st vrain is in that area and didn't open till the end of June.