Colorado Winter Driving

[ejallison1]

Mark,
We stayed at Tiger Run last winter. First time in Colorado with the bus (86 PT40) in the winter. Tiger Run has great amenities. Easy access on and off I-70. Bring a GPS since the entrance to Tiger Run is in my opinion not well marked. Get as close to the club house as possible since that is where the pool, hot tub showers, and laundry. Decent wi-fi is available in the library but not in bus. Cable was being worked on during our stay and I don't believe satelite would pick-up anything due to the terrain. We were right across the street so kids could walk back and forth. Lot of ski resorts within 25 miles: Breckenridge, Copper etc. Almost all of the sites are back in but they clear them off of snow prior to arrivals.

We put rock salt in the dump tanks so contents and dump valve would not freeze. Did not leave the water hook up attached. Just filled the holding tanks as needed. Dumping available at the site. Temp was in the the single digits and teens at night and we did not have any trouble with freezing pipes. Ran one or two electrical heaters as needed. Our water pipes have electrical heat tape. It has been advised not to use these due to their age, however I did change out the receptacle they plug into with a GFCI. That way if they do short it will turn off. Don't know if this is applicable to your bus. I imagine you have a diesel fired heat source that will heat the bays. Make sure it is in good working order or have an electrical portable heater for the bays with water lines. Make sure you have a bottle of RV antifreeze to pour down the shower/tub drain after use. Ours is exposed to outside and no way to insulate it. I did bring along an electrical oil pan heater for cars that I purchased from NAPA and used it for the generator just in case the park lost power. Actually ended up using it on our Jetta diesel.

Colrado requires that semi's and busses carry chains for the drive wheels on I-70 west of Denver. You are not required to use them. If road conditions are bad enough that they mandate their use you can pull off and wait it out but you must have them on board. They do a good job of keeping I-70 clear and when we arrived it had snowed and was snowing and the roads were still in good shape on one lane. Flashing info signs give road conditions and notify if chains are required. Was not required on our trip. Our bus handled well on the secondary roads which had snow. Just went slow and kept plenty of distance. They all seems to drive 4WD vehicles and go fast. I had no trouble negotiating roads in our little FWD Jetta. I highly reccomend you arrive and leave during daylight hours. We got a late start leaving and did not enjoy the drive back to Denver in the dark. Also don't think they had as many maintenance people clearing the roads at night. Suggest you have the air dryer serviced with new desicant if not done recently and drain all the air tanks prior to trip departure. You WILL need to wash the bus after this trip.

We did a side trip to Leadville which is 60 miles or so from Tiger Run. They have a great mining museum and some nice restaurants and shopping-this is not Vail but the drive up was beautiful. They also have a year round campground. Didn't look like they had the amenities of Tiger Run but there is a ski resort there that looked nice and was much more reasonably priced. Road into Leadville was a wide two lane state road-not as well kept as I-70 but very doable.

Was a great trip and kids recently asked if we could go again this winter.