Songline for Wolf Creek Pass

[Tonchi]

Yeah, that was what my ski instructor told me that Monday: "I don't know how you could have missed it, there's a sign right there on the road...." Uh-hum.

The next time I did anything so dumb as to drive Wolf Creek in a Duster was the weekend I moved to Tucson in Spring of 1981. I drove my new RX-7 up the back side of Mount Lemmon in the Catalina Mountains because somebody told me there was a ski resort up there. Forgot to tell me there was a perfectly good paved road on the other side though The "road" could be best described as assorted gullies punctuated by large boulders. When I told somebody at the store at the top how I got there, he said that was impossible, nobody could do it without 4WD. Oh well. I was taught how to drive in mountains by a geologist while I was at CU, practiced on some of the roads above Gunnison while we were on surveys. I am a lot calmer and gentler nowdays, hee hee.

Originally Posted by Tonchi

Oh well. I was taught how to drive in mountains by a geologist while I was at CU, practiced on some of the roads above Gunnison while we were on surveys. I am a lot calmer and gentler nowdays, hee hee.

Pleasure to make your aquaintance! One of my first mountain driving instructers was a professor of biology at CU. Ten of us spent one entire summer roaming the mountains of Colorado getting herbarium specimens, doing transects and vegetation surveys. What a blast!

[Tonchi]

Faaaar out! as we used to say in those days You and I probably have something else in common: we might be the only ones here who actually know where the original South Park is and have been through there many times!

Just checked and found out we're both Libras. That's totally far out too

Too cool! We'll let South Park be our little secret. How the hell did you end up in Fresno?

[Tonchi]

The momster lives here. I had to get as far away from an abusive husband as possible so I left Phoenix and refugeed here 12 years ago along with my 3 dogs, 1 cat, and 3 birds. Because of my lung condition, I had to stay close to sea level and could not go back to Colorado or New Mexico. In July I finally had the operation which is supposed to solve all the problems, within a year I should be Rocky Mountain High again. I have missed skiing more than anything else

[glatt]

Originally Posted by Tonchi

The next time I did anything so dumb as to drive Wolf Creek in a Duster was the weekend I moved to Tucson in Spring of 1981. I drove my new RX-7 up the back side of Mount Lemmon in the Catalina Mountains because somebody told me there was a ski resort up there. Forgot to tell me there was a perfectly good paved road on the other side though The "road" could be best described as assorted gullies punctuated by large boulders. When I told somebody at the store at the top how I got there, he said that was impossible, nobody could do it without 4WD. Oh well.

When I was a kid, my family drove up the back side of Mt. Lemmon in a VW bus. It was an adventure, and took all day to do what would have taken an hour on the paved road, but we made it in one piece too. The locals didn't believe us when we told them what we did. I remember having to stop and get out to push big rocks/small boulders out of the "road" so we could pass. My dad did some slow careful driving that day. A VW bus is surprisingly good off-road because it is so high off the road, and has no driveshaft in the way.