I always enjoy a dirve through that area.
I don’t recall any scary driving going into Cripple Creek — we drove in from Flourisant (sp?). The scary drive I remember on that trip was leaving Yellowstone via the Northeast Gate over what was called at that time the Cooke City Highway (I think they have since changed the name). We left Yellowstone about an hour before dusk, so we were making this drive during dusk. I had no idea — single lane road leading up into the Rockies, elevation probably >10,000 ft., no guardrails the entire trip. This was around Labor Day, so very little traffic. My wife in the passenger’s side had views of drops of 3-4,000 ft. just over her shoulder. Kids in the backseat were fortunately falling asleep and unaware of how dicey this was. When we got to the summit, I saw a car pulled over to the side so I parked the car in the middle of the road went over and asked what they were doing. The driver said he wasn’t going another 100 yards — he had driven up from the other side out of Montana. I asked how bad that drive was and he told me about the same. But it was another 20-30 miles down the mountain with similar scariness. We pulled into a motel in Red Lodge, MT at the bottom of this drive and I was shaken.
That will always be my worst “cliffhanger” of a drive. Did you ever drive that one?