Schofield Still Blocked — Report from the Marble/Crystal Side
Snow blockage June 13 2009. Click to enlarge.
We got up there today to check it out. The area just before the Punchbowl is still blocked. Too sidehilly to give it a go, and the ATVs haven’t even been doing it. I’d estimate that hardcore ‘wheelers might be able to get over the snow plug by next weekend, perhaps first by coming from the Crested Butte direction so they can ride the snow in a downhill direction. Even so, hairball! We also heard the road is still blocked on the Crested Butte side at Emerald Lake, but it might be possible to bypass that blockage by doing Paradise Divide.
On Schofield Pass Road, just above Crystal, on the Crested Butte side of the Leadking turnoff.
Weather today was excellent. A few high clouds in the morning made me wonder if we’d get wet. But even though the sky was somewhat gray by mid-afternoon, we didn’t have to deploy our raingear.
We do have a bikini-top for the yellow jeep (AKA Rumble Bee), but without side doors you eventually get wet anyway. Wearing our backpacking type raingear keeps us dry to an extent, but after a few hours of spray it can still get pretty miserable. So I try to predict the weather and not get too far from home if it looks rainy. Or, too far from Woody’s, for that matter…
And, of course, after a wee bit o’ ‘wheelin’ what’s better than a stop at Woody’s Cook Shack in Marble? Tell them SchofieldPass.com sent you.
Woody's Cook Shack in Marble. Click to enlarge.
So, you really think that’ll be drivable by next weekend? That snow looks scary.
Hard to say for sure… the snow we saw yesterday was really slanted towards the river. If you started sliding sideways, you’d have a lot of trouble doing a recovery because there are no winch anchors in most places. The lack of winch anchors is the biggest problem. A Pull-Pal might work in the snow, but not under much load ’cause it would just rip a trench. Burying a large log in the snowpack might do the trick, but would be a lot of work. If we could find one rock outcrop in the scree field to the east of the snow, we could install a winch anchor on that, but as far as I can tell it’s all loose scree. Interesting problem.
Thanks for the updates!
Thanks for the info. We are trying to get up to our cabin site and were hoping it would be open by the 4th of July, but maybe not.
We’re thinking it’ll be open by the 4th, but don’t know about Paradise or Emerald on the CB site.