Originally Posted by Dillonbuck
1988 we were hunting the 12 day season.
We took a day to basically ride around see what there was to see,
and maybe a different place to hunt. I was a 19 year old, in the back of a Toyota with a cap.
There was another guy in the back, two up front.

We went over the pass, down through the meadow past the little cabin, and past the
signs saying experienced 4-wheelers with properly equipped vehicles only.
A little way in it was narrow, with a drop on one side, the road cut into the rock wall
And a solid wall on the other. Then we came to the boulder in the road. Not wanting to back
out, and figuring we would be fine on the other side, we got out and guided the truck around.
Barely!

The road was mostly like #4 or 6 stone, and much of it was so narrow the guys up front couldn't
get out. There were vehicles rolled down into the canyon that couldn't be recovered,
and one had to ponder the fate of the passengers. After the worst, there is an old
mill, near Marble, Google it. There was a little store at a crossroad, nothing else.
We stopped to get a drink, and ask an old man the best way back to Crested Butte or
Gunnison. He looked at us a bit, and said, "Well how did you get here".
We just said down this road. He looked at us again, and said "Boys, I won't go through there
on anything but a horse".

Some of our group were behind us, and tried to go through in an F-250. The driver
drove trucks and well drilling rigs his whole life. They couldn't get around the boulder,
and had to back probably a mile or more back out. Those passengers wouldn't ride.
Said someone had to live to tell the story.

We stayed at Lost Canyon Resort, just cabins.
Telling the owner about our ride, he shared the story of a family that tried to go through
there in a full size Bronco or Blazer. It went over in the Devil's Punchbowl, the driver bailed
as it slid off the road. He lived, his family didn't.


If you remember the Snuffy Smith road above Emerald Lake, in the '90's, a truck driver
tried to go through that road in an 18 wheeler. He got hung up there, and was stuck for
days. They finally had to bring in cranes to hoist him out. If he had gotten through,
He was looking to go through the canyon to Aspen.



That Devils Punch Bowl road has eaten its share of vehicles and people from what I have heard. I have ridden pretty far back in there on a bicycle, and I would not want to do it in a regular size motor vehicle. I cannot imagine any sober person trying any of that in an 18 wheeler. This is what it looked like today after I turned around because of a mound of snow across the road.

[Linked Image]



Last edited by PaulBarnard; 07/18/19.