Overland Expo Mountain West 2021, By Air?

The year 2021 was a slow year for me in the overlanding department. Besides normal life stuff, I was saving up vacation days for next year’s big trip up to the Arctic Ocean as well as undertaking a rather large “home project”. I put that in air quotes because the project was setting up a new 270g marine aquarium and building a supporting fish room for it. With that eating up nearly all of my free time this summer, I did not get out to explore very much. 2021 was also the first year of the Overland Expo Mountain West event and since it was practically right in my backyard, I just had to attend.

Being an expo about overlanding it would not be right to just drive up for the day or stay overnight in a hotel. No, for this extended weekend only camping in a remote(ish) spot would do for me. While the location of the Expo is great for the event, there is not really a lot of places to camp nearby unless you want to stay on the premises. I’ve done this in the past at the Expo down in Flagstaff, but this time I wanted more nature and fewer neighbors.

While the Expo was just a couple of hours from my home, I was not actually very familiar with the trails and camping sites in that area. Jumping on Google, Gaia GPS, and Trails Off Road, I started to narrow down some possibilities. These online resources are great for planning trips, but they can never replace actually seeing a place in person, especially when you plan to tow a trailer through them. Since it was so close to home I was going to spend a day and just take the Gladiator to explore the area, but I was still trying to get the aquarium setup and did really have the time to spare. Then I thought, what better way to recon an area then by air!

My buddy and coworker, EKat, is a private pilot as well as an outdoors kind of guy. Since he never needs an excuse to go flying, it was pretty easy to get him to fly me up to the area I was looking at to check things out.

EKat, the dashing pilot. — *It has been years since I did any flying in a small private plane, man technology has changed things!*

Burn Scar — *You can really see how much wildfires have damaged the state of Colorado over the last dozen years from the air.*

*Viewing things from the air also allows you to see how a trail system connects in the surrounding area.*

Papa Charlie (prime campsite) — *Campsite found!*

*Not wanting to waste the return flight, I kept my eyes open for other areas to go explore in the future.*

The Pole Hill area just outside of Estes Park turned out to be the perfect place. With trail ratings between 3 and 5, it was rough enough to keep the family campers away and challenging enough to make it fun with the trailer.

*The trailhead is in a neighborhood, but there is a nice area for airing down right at the start.*

*Much of the trail leading into the area has some easier lines, but there were plenty of places to do it in hard mode if you wanted to.*

*Pictures never do justice to the terrain on trails..*

The campsite was really nice and had lots of room, something I hope to take advantage of in the future with some friends making the trip to the Expo in years to come.

*I’m really looking forward to bringing my dog, Maximus, to this site. The large meadow is going to be lots of fun for him.*

One of the nice things about this area is that there are a couple of trails off of this one to go explore. With camp all setup and plenty of daylight left, it was time to go run one of them. Solitude Creek has a lower overall rating, but it does have one small technical section (it can be bypassed) and some fun rock outcroppings to drive through.

*The tall wall on the passenger side has some rock climbing anchors buried in it for those so inclined to do a little bit of climbing.*

There were several nice campsites along this trail. I could have probably gotten my trailer back into these if I had really wanted to, but the juice was just not worth the squeeze since I already had a sweet spot closer to entrance of the trail system. I still had to drive in and out of the area to get to the Expo a couple of time, so I saw no reason to make that a longer drive then it needed to be.

Back in camp it was time to just enjoy the evening and the wonderful scenery.

*Estes Park in the distance to the west.*

*With all of the beetle kill and wildfires of late, it is nice to see some trees are still really green.*

*A solo trip can make for a sad and lonely meal, but it was still yummy!*

The next day I got an early start on running the other trail in the area, Panorama Peak. This trail is quite easy, rated at only a 3-3 on Trails Off Road . At some point the USFS gated the section of the trail that went up to Panorama Peak its self and the fire lookout sitting at the top. As a little bonus, since I was running this trail on a Friday morning, I only saw one other vehicle the entire time. There are still some decent views along this trail and some really good camping sites along some of the off shoot roads. These are no good for trailer camping due to the tight trees, but ground or RTT camping would be great at some of these spots. One in particular had room for several vehicles and tents, a nice rock formation to scramble on and a good view of Longs Peak from that rock formation.

*At the right time of year, this little hilly meadow chould be covered in flowers.*

*While just a little hill climb, it was still fun.*

Being that I was up here on a Friday, I was able to a little tele-working to save some PTO time for next year’s big trip. Being able to tele-work from remote locations from time to time is a nice perk of the Covid world we now live in.

One of my co-works lives up in this area and is always telling me about all the really tough trails in his backyard. I could not pass up the opportunity to go and find his favorite when I needed to do a supply run!

Saturday morning I got up early to make the hour plus drive into Loveland Colorado where the first ever Overland Expo Mountain West event was being held. For those not familiar with Overland Expo events, they are multiday events that combine camping, education and shopping for us offroad adventure types. This was the second Expo that I have attended, the first being Expo West several years ago. Since this was the first time for the Mountain West Expo and the first Expo post Covid shut downs, it was a little smaller than the I one I went to previously. Even though it was smaller, there were still hundreds of vendors showing off their gear and hours and hours of classes that you could take. There are also a lot of very cool vehicles to checkout… both in the vendor and the on site camping areas.

*There are typically several concept/pre-production vehicles on display at these events, this time around the most interesting for me was the all electric Hummer.*

*More and more full size truck setups are showing up at these events.*

*I’ve never seen a Unimog in the wild, but maybe that is because they are all just driving from Expo to Expo each year!*

*I really love my UpTop Overland roof rack, so I had to swing by their display and chat them up a bit.*

*With very few secure storage options for the Jeep Gladiator, it was nice to see some new products out there.*

With the Expo wrapped up for me, it was time to pack up camp and head back home. Over all this was a nice extended weekend that I look forward to doing each year.