Cinnamon pass is an easy and relaxing drive.
Not too easy for me to be a fool.
At the end of Cinnamon pass is Animas Fork. A pretty good sized town.
We decided to head up through California Pass.
A Boiler,
Getting colder.
Okay, it was time for Poughkeepsie Gulch.
This rock wall is steeper than it looks.
The rain was coming down pretty good now. I wish I knew how to rotate a video, but lean to YOUR left and enjoy me going down the rain soaked wall.
That was interesting!
It was raining pretty good now and it actually made some of the more tame trails more interesting.
Engineer, Cinnamon, Carson city, California pass and Poughkeepsie were a long day. We headed into Ouray for some candy, food and beer!
As night approached we looked for a good place to camp. The waitress in Ouray said we had to check out the hot springs just outside of Ridgeway. We got a camping spot for entirely too much money at the Orvis Hot Springs! The "view" was worth it though.
We headed out to get a six pack of brew to sit and drink while watching the storm roll in. I'm just a sinner from California and AZ and I had never heard of not selling beer on Sunday's. Hell, I buy most of my beer on Sunday. Oh well. I went back to camp beerless and heart broken. We sat in the 4runner and watched the storm roll in.
The next day we woke up and headed through Ouray on our way to run some more trails.
It was raining pretty good and we headed out to do Hurricane, Placer and California.
Here is an interesting idea when the hill keeps sliding. Just let it slider over the road.
We were literally in the clouds.
All of a sudden the rain froze and then turned into snow!
I did what any good person would do and built a small snowman to watch over us.
This made the trails pretty interesting.
This is definately the coldest so far!
No one else was stupid enough to be on the passes while it was snowing so we got first tracks.
We headed over placer pass
Well after all of that white knuckle fun we headed over to another area where it was a bit lower elevation and the snow had stopped.
An old heating stove
Remains of an old suspension bridge.
The mountains kept changing colors around us
If this looks a bit like a ski lift its because it is a pre-cursor to one. Its amazing how similar a modern day one is. This one was used to shuttle miners up to the mine.
You can see some of the pylings from the old lift.
I am still trying to figure out what this was, but it is huge!
We found ourselves in silverton and saw some cars that needed to have a picture taken.
After all of this we were craving snow again... Whats the highest pass around. IMOGENE!
We headed up the pass from Ouray. Once we got into the snow were realized that again we were making first tracks. The snow started out at an inch deep and kept progressing. Next thing we knew it was 5 inches. The tires were spinning and it was late in the day. For the first time some rock ledges took a couple tries to get up. This is NOT good when there are cliffs on either side!
We kept plugging away. This was no longer fun. It was hair raising and the snow kept piling up with no other people or cars in sight.
After working at getting up a particularly bad spot and remembering how at the top of the pass the road leans out to the cliff... Danica mentioned that we might want to turn around. It was all my ego needed to finally give into the logical and sane decision. We promptly turned around!
Here you can see out first tracks going up the mountain behind us.
Of course I made another snow man to protect us on the way down.
We lived and were happy to! We ran into a fella in a ford taurus, yes a FORD TAURUS who was trying to get up Yankee Boy Basin road. His map showed the pass to Telluride to be a 2wd trail... I told him that if he were getting stuck on the grated Yankee Boy road that he would not find the pass interesting...
That was all I needed to call it a day. We set up camp on a side trail and went to bed.
The next morning we stopped in Silverton on the way home.
The meaning of the word PAN CAKE never seemed so evident.
We checked out the town and headed home.
Thankfully this guy never had to come and save us!
I took very few pics on the way home because after Colorado, nothing seemed as nice.
and new mexico is a dump... At least the towns we went through.
Purgatory
Old train
new train!
Hope you enjoyed it. I can't wait to go here again!
Tim