Ford Explorer NBX - Mountain Drive

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.