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Cleveland Gulch: Cinnamon Pass to Schafer Basin

Mountains of Minerals | Thursday – Friday, July 2-3, 2026

This week I had Friday off from work for the Independence Day holiday and planned to spend it in the San Juan Triangle hiking around Cleveland Gulch from Cinnamon Pass to the ridge above Schafer Basin. Although there are quite a few large wildfires burning in Colorado, Utah and Arizona right now, this particular area was being spared from most of the smoke and seemed like a good place to go. I left from work on Thursday afternoon and initially thought I was going to have to drive the long way around to Lake City since Highway 550 had been closed earlier in the week due to the Gold Mountain Fire near Ouray, but luckily it had just been reopened on Wednesday afternoon. When I stopped to top off my gas tank in Montrose I double-checked COtrip one last time to make sure that Highway 550 was actually still open, and it was, so I carried on driving towards Ouray. Of course it figures, by the time I made it past Ridgway the road had been closed again! Thankfully, this time traffic was just being rerouted on County Road 23 instead of having to go the long way around, so it only slowed me down a little.

Ouray Trails: Silvershield Trail & Oak Creek Trail

San Juan Triangle | Monday – Tuesday, June 23-24, 2025

I wasn’t able to get out hiking on Juneteenth last Thursday like I had hoped since I was trying to figure out what was going on with my Jeep most of last week, so to make up for it I decided to take a day off from work this week and head on down to Ouray to hike a few of the trails closer to town. The weather forecast for Tuesday was looking like the best conditions of the week, so I left after work on Monday and made my way down to Ouray. After a quick stop for dinner in Delta and gas in Montrose, I continued on to the parking lot at the Ouray Hot Springs Pool so I could hike the last segment of the Ouray Perimeter Trail that was not yet built when Diane and I hiked the loop over nine years ago. Although it was a bit warm in Ouray this evening, most of the trail that I hiked this evening was already in the shade and there was a nice breeze.

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Ouray Solstice Hiking

Upper Cascade Falls & Baldy Peak
Saturday & Sunday, June 21-22, 2014

This weekend for the summer solstice, Diane and I headed down to Ouray to get in a little hiking in the San Juan Mountains. Since there’s still a lot of snow up high and it would be our first time really hiking in the mountains this year, we decided to start with some lower elevation hikes close to town between 8,000 and 10,000 feet. When we arrived, we setup camp just above town in the Amphitheater Campground and then got started on our first hike up to the Upper Cascade Creek Falls and Chief Ouray Mine. The hike started out easy, but soon it quickly climbed over 1,000 feet up a series of switchbacks. First we reached the Upper Cascade Falls and took a few photos and then we crossed the creek and continued on to the remains of the Chief Ouray Mine located high above town.

Tag: cutler creek

Cleveland Gulch: Cinnamon Pass to Schafer Basin

Ouray Trails: Silvershield Trail & Oak Creek Trail

Ouray Solstice Hiking