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More Exploring in the Colorado Mountains

Ford Explorer shows its readiness again and again

With a few days in Colorado Springs behind us, several pounds heavier and a little less enamored with turkey, my girlfriend and I scooted west and north on State Route 24 toward Wilkerson Pass. It was a bright and absurdly crisp morning. We passed 67 South just west of Woodland Park, upon which a few miles would have us in Cripple Creek, a backwoods gold production boomtown from the early 1900s. Edging north toward Breckenridge, Copper Mountain, Keystone and Arapahoe Basin, the cozy Explorer (outside thermometer: 12F) was then pointed up 9 North. We stopped ourselves to take a meander through sadly commercialized downtown Breck, a puzzle of real estate offices, souvenirs storefronts and overpriced "mountain" cuisine. You can still find the history here, and it's worth looking, but it'll take a few hours with a bulldozer scraping away T-shirts and silly hats. Don't even ask about the housing prices. Now depressed, Interstate 70 led us west, right to the front door of Copper Mountain. This was a happier moment.

You can ride Copper or Breckenridge back to back, and personal opinion could go either way. Breck has the name, and the trail selection. Copper has the terrain, with huge real estate and some excellent bowls. Both are worth your time. Copper has better early-season snow, in my humble opinion, so I usually wind up there prior to the Christmas holiday. Buy your lift tickets in advance for the best deal, preferably wrapped in package with your room rental. There's usually a good discount to be had if you grind the nice salesperson on the phone. Then cross your fingers for the white stuff. Fortunately, we'd been blessed.

NBX Style

Ford's Explorer didn't mind where we went. At this point, we had a thick layer of snow crud and mud all over the thing. This was a combination of the Colorado DOT's potash and salt de-freeze mix, iced over with a slick mud-based substance thrown up on dirt roads by the BFGoodrich tires. The feature list our Explorer NBX arrived with demonstrated repeatedly how well Ford had thought out its audience. Down to the deep-well floor mats and imperceptible torque transfer within the AdvanceTrac center diff, we were constantly pleased.

Features? A well-balanced sound system is a must for loooong drives (even if Telluride had only been 12 hours from San Diego), and the multiple-disc CD changer was a treat if you don't feel like changing discs once an hour. Like supportive seats? Lots of "chuck it in the back" space? The interior continued to prove impressive, with assembly quality above what some previous Explorer experiences had led us to expect. Intelligent nooks and crannies for the bits and pieces that go along with preparedness and drivability do this Ford justice.

Ford has come a long way from the early days of the SUV where function still meant everything, and their attention to real-world design and the usability of things is unmatched by other domestic corporate offerings (though still behind the near-ridiculous exactness delivered by the likes of VW or Honda). Not a truck anymore, the Explorer, now built with limited dependence on other vehicles for parts bin support, has an interior that can be called "sorted." It's cozy, going great lengths to deny the size and bearing of this truly large vehicle (more than 4300 lbs. and 190 inches long by 72 inches tall and wide), and approachable, easily used within 9/10th of its functional ideal. You feel at home in here, almost immediately, and that contributed to the overall sense of appreciation we came away with whenever stepping from the vehicle. It was a good truck, err, wagon. There you go, Ford's new slogan: Explorer—really a nice wagon, but doing an excellent job of being like the truck it once was.

Skill Level

Rooted in one of the prettiest corners of America, Summit County is home to uncounted samples of early American history, having seen rich men and poor, murderers, geniuses, gold and silver, money new and old and staggering examples of ingenuity exerted in the thirst for those precious metals. And a lot of great snow.

Starting at Copper Mountain and quickly running to the high bowls, I rode out two days there poking around in what was really good snow for November, though I still blew an edge off my board in the slightly rocky upper reaches. With a few bucks spent at a sport shop at the bottom in Copper's base village, things were glued happily in place (you can fix many things with Liquid Nail), re-PTexed and waxed and I was off to neighboring Breckenridge. Before migrating, we spent some serious hours creeping around the dirt roads behind the developed ski-and-board tourist traps looking at history. Old mines, sluices, blown-out cabins, ancient rail beds, one of Breckenridge's dredges, there's still some of our past self-evident when you search it out. A day at the 'Ridge dodging amateurs chased me back to Copper for a fourth and final ride, and by then my legs and wallet were shot.

With four days of riding Copper and Breckenridge in my pocket (too many tourists at Breck, folks), we pointed Ford's freeway-happy ship westish on Interstate 70 and began the one-day slog back to So Cal. The treat of living in San Diego is that you're just a one-day from Summit County—only fifteen hours if you put your mind to it. Or thirteen hours from Los Angeles, straight up the 15 North through Lost Wages (Las Vegas) and across the stark, cloven landscape of Utah and then in Colorado's western door, now east on the 70. It's a little weird—the 15 is two turns and ten minutes from my house in San Diego, and Copper Mountain is one minute and two turns off the 70, so we're talking about five intersections total.

This time, though, downhill, and out of Colorado we go. The ride from Summit County rambles through all sorts of canyon, ridge and mountain, through Glenwood Springs (the old western gateway to Colorado's high mountains) and past Grand Junction on the high plains. Though the top-heavy nature of the new Explorer is well-improved beyond the earlier generation's real and imagined tip-happy issues, it's still hard to conceal that a great share of this wagon's mass is oriented toward the up. Driving it in a curvy manner is not scary, but if you pay any attention to vehicle dynamics you can't miss the less than ideal center of gravity. Some of the multi-lane sweepers we encountered at freeway speeds on the 70 can be a bit interesting. It's being aware of this that'll keep you safe—you're not driving your mother's Honda Accord anymore.

Fifteen hours, a few bad truck-stop snacks and five states later, a new Explorer that had shown itself to be road-trip heaven was parked in my driveway—and I was letting gravity show me where to sleep.