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Ironton Park: Hayden Trail & Colorado Boy Mine

San Juan Triangle | Monday, July 3, 2023

After cutting our backpacking trip into the Flat Tops Wilderness short this past weekend, I decided to head down near Ouray on Monday morning to get in a little more hiking before the Fourth of July holiday since I definitely need to start getting back into shape and hiking at higher elevations again. For this day trip I planned to focus my attention on the Ironton Park area and hike one of the trails that climbs up to the shoulder of Hayden Mountain. I woke up extra early on Monday morning, grabbed a quick breakfast on the way and made it to Crystal Lake just after 7:00am so I could start hiking up the south side of the Hayden Trail.

Million Dollar Highway Fall Colors

Fall Colors 2022 | Friday – Saturday, September 30 – October 1, 2022

Normally, I would have left from work on Friday afternoon and headed west into Utah to spend the entire week exploring new canyons of the Colorado Plateau, but this year there was a concert on Sunday evening that delayed the start of my trip by a couple days, so I thought I would try to get up into the high country near Silverton one last time until next summer. Unfortunately, the weather would have other plans for me this weekend and I would end up just taking some photos of the fall colors along the Million Dollar Highway on Saturday morning instead.

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Among Giants of the Uncompahgre: Matterhorn Peak

Uncompahgre Wilderness: Between Uncompahgre and Wetterhorn Peaks
Friday & Saturday, August 14-15, 2020

This Sunday Diane and I have a camping permit secured for an overnight backpacking trip to the popular Conundrum Hot Springs near Aspen, but I didn’t want to skip out on hiking at least one new peak this weekend, so I thought I’d try to find something quick and easy to hike on Saturday morning before I returned home to pack for the overnighter. Since I haven’t made it back to the Uncompahgre Wilderness yet this year, and it’s probably my favorite wilderness area close to home, I figured doing something in that area would be a good choice. After looking over my maps I settled on hiking Matterhorn Peak (13,590) which has been on my to-do list for far too long. What better way to spend the morning than hiking in between two of my favorite 14ers!

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The Mountain Belle at Red Mountain Pass

A Winter Weekend Snowshoe Hut Trip
Friday – Sunday, January 3-5, 2020

If you know me or have been following along with my blog for any amount of time, then you probably already know that I prefer to spend my winters hiking in the desert rather than playing in the snow in the mountains. However, this weekend I decided to finally try something new that has been on my ‘to try’ list for a long time, which is to snowshoe to a hut in the mountains. Back in August I decided I was finally going to try it this winter and booked the Mountain Belle cabin above Red Mountain Pass for the first weekend of the year. I chose this particular cabin since it’s not far from home, it’s in an area that I’m very familiar with, and the hike to it isn’t very difficult since this would be our first time doing something like this. We were a little concerned that the Million Dollar Highway might be closed by a winter storm like it had been the previous weekend, but thankfully we missed the storm that moved through on New Years Day and had great weather for our very first hut trip.

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Three Out of Three: Red Mountain No. 2

National Summit Day | Final Peak on the Abrams – Anvil Ridge
Friday – Saturday, August 2-3, 2019

Over the years I’ve viewed the summit of Red Mountain No. 2 from many different vantage points; reflected in Crystal Lake from Ironton Park, along the Jeep road to Corkscrew Pass, while exploring the old mining buildings of the Red Mountain Mining District below, and from the top of many of the surrounding peaks in the area. This weekend I had a concert to go to on Saturday evening so I was looking for a peak to climb that was pretty short and close to home. Since I’d already climbed Red Mountain #1 and Red Mountain #3 I figured it was finally time to finish off the trio. Not only would this be my third and final summit of the Red Mountains, but Red Mountain #2 was also the only peak along the ridge on the east side of the Million Dollar Highway between Abrams Mountain and Anvil Mountain that I had not climbed yet, so it would be nice to finish that ridge, too. This turned out to be a fitting hike for Saturday morning since it was apparently National Summit Day, even though Red Mountain #2 is not a ranked, high or popular peak. Those are my favorite kind!

Tag: abrams mountain

Ironton Park: Hayden Trail & Colorado Boy Mine

Million Dollar Highway Fall Colors

Among Giants of the Uncompahgre: Matterhorn Peak

The Mountain Belle at Red Mountain Pass

Three Out of Three: Red Mountain No. 2