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Bunce School Road Rating Trail Photos  Return to Trail List   
Boulder, CO: Trail Head: N 40?7.895, W 105?30.553  Trail End: N 40?10.371, W 105?28.08
Delorme CO Atlas & Gazeteer pg: 29, 7-C
Nearby Trails: Coming Soon.


Access: From Estes Park, CO take Hwy 7 south through Meeker Park and Allenspark. Just North of the Hwy 72 turn-off you'll see a sign for 'Point of Interest' which will take you past the Bunce School House and the North end of the trail. To enter the trail from the souht take Hwy 72 south to Peaceful Valley. There is a turn off for Camp Dick. Take this road to the trail head. The trail follows Hwy 72 north back to Hwy 7.




Trail: The beginning part of the trail is quite tame winding through wooded areas and rocky areas. This first section of the trail is where you will encounter a few short spur roads that might liven up your trip a bit. In the wintertime, you will run into drifted snow upon reaching some small clearings in the valley (between 2 and 3 miles). This has swallowed up and forced many to turn around. During the summer, however, it is just a pleasant drive. You will cross some private land, so stay on the trail. Upon the decent into Peaceful Valley (the last 1? miles), you will encounter a rocky shelf road that is plenty wide in the summer, but feels much narrower in the wintertime. Your summer drive through this section will be quite bumpy, but doesn?t require any special equipment or driver skill (just go slow and endure it). There are several tight switchbacks that I had to get around with my 1-ton Chevy crew cab, but nothing a bit of backing didn?t take care of.

-Dave Nichols (1989 Chevy 1-ton crew cab truck with a 6? Superlift suspension and 36? Super Swampers)

On 10/05/01 after spending the morning up on FR122 and FR247 and not finding anything too challenging, we drove over to Peaceful Valley/Camp Dick to the 3 trail heads in that area. Our intention was to take the Middle St. Vrain and Coney Creek trails, but the start from Camp Dick was very rocky and very slow going. There were some fun obstacles, but about a mile into the trail we encountered a rock section that I wasn't sure if my 2" lift and 31" tires would be enough to get through. After getting out and looking at the the rocks and trying to decide which line to take, I noticed oil on the bigger rocks sticking up in the middle of the trail. This indicated to me that others had damaged their vehicles trying to get through. Since we were a single vehicle troup comprised of myself, my wife and our two small children and me not sure I had sufficient clearance to pass through, we turned around and came back down.
We saw the start of FR115 and decided to take the trail. The first part of the trail coming up from Camp Dick is steep and very rocky. We did not have any trouble here, but I doubt that some of the stock SUV's with minimal ground clearance would be able to get through without scraping their under carriage. On the ascent there are a few switch backs, and as most of the leaves have fallen from the trees there is a good view of the the river and Pleasant Valley as you climb up. Once past this section and more towards the top of the mountain, the road turns more tame. We saw other roads that left the trail but we did not take any of them, so I am not sure if the rejoin FR115 or not. We encountered several low spots in the trail that were full of water and ice, but none were too deep.
Up on top we encounterd a .5 mile long spot that is posted private property. Just past this area there are some large rock formations that we stopped and climbed around on to give the kids a break. There are several nice camping spots in this area as well.
From here we started our descent down to Bunce School. This half of the mountain trail is not much more than a dirt road which most cars would be able to take. The first part of the trail ascending from Camp Dick was more challenging than anything we found on FR122 and 247 earlier in the day, and I would recommend running the trail starting at the Camp Dick side rather than the Bunce School end.
-Bill Shafer

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G.P.S. Coordinate List:
No Extended G.P.S. data for this trail is available.