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The Great American Crawl- Carnage Canyon/Chinaman Gulch/Holy Cross Trail, CO

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As we make our way back over to the West Coast, our next stop took us to Buena Vista, CO. This area of Colorado has access to some wild trails known as “Carnage Canyon” and the “Holy Cross Trail”. Carnage Canyon is known to be one of the toughest trails in the nation, while the Holy Cross Trail is less difficult but holds a few challenges itself. On Friday morning, we met up at the Chinaman Gulch trailhead with everyone who was ready to wheel. We split groups up and sent an easier group to the Chinaman Gulch loop, while a more difficult group worked their way up Carnage Canyon. This canyon definitely held up to its name! The V notch at towards the bottom of the trail is insane and made its mark on almost every rig that tried to get up to it. This gave the other group time to finish their loop, and come watch. After the V notch, we made our way up the trail to the top where there was one last tough obstacle in our way. To complete this trail, there was a huge three step ledge with two more above it. These made for some more winching fun throughout the day. Despite only one u joint breaking, we got everyone through the trail and back to the parking lot well before dark. As Saturday morning arrived, we met up with everyone just below the entrance to the Holy Cross Trail. This trail is a high elevation(11,000+ft) trail with a few moderate obstacles that leads up to the old mining city of Holy Cross City. Its over 130 years old and still has standing buildings and some old mining equipment. Pretty cool piece of history in that area! After getting everyone up to the old city area, a few of the more advanced builds decided to keep going up trail to a spot known as “Cleveland Rock”. This is a massive rock slab with a couple different line choices; all of which are very slippery. A few of the vehicles in our group were able to make it up and down without any issues while a few others got shutdown and just couldn’t make it up. Getting down this obstacle was half the battle! As it got later into the evening, we got everyone down off the trail and met up at our rental place for an appreciation BBQ and the raffle. We raffled off things from gift certificates, gloves, hats, and a few other awesome prizes. This trip was a tough one but a fun one. We’re thankful for everyone who came out to hangout and wheel with us. We had a good time and cant wait for the final crawl event in AZ in Nov. Check The Great American Crawl Facebook page for updates on what’s to come. Cheers!

Great American Crawl Brand Partners