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Tag: million dollar highway

Coal Bank Pass: Spud Lake Trail & Pass Trail

Wednesday & Thursday, July 26-27, 2023

While spending the latter part of this week attending the annual GIS Colorado Summer Meetup at the Chris Park Campground near Durango, I was able to get out on a couple of short hikes near Coal Bank Pass since I was in the area. On Wednesday afternoon I left work, grabbed a quick dinner in Delta and then headed down through the San Juan Mountains to the campground via the San Juan Skyway. After crossing over Red Mountain Pass and getting stopped by construction for a little while, I continued over Molas Pass and Coal Bank Pass and then turned off onto the old Lime Creek Road so I could go on a short hike to Potato Lake via the Spud Lake Trail.

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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.

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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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Weminuche Wanderings: Lime Mesa to Overlook Point

Mountain View Crest of the Weminuche Wilderness
Friday – Saturday, August 26-27, 2022

Since I was going to be leaving after work on Monday afternoon for a weeklong trip into northern Colorado and southern Wyoming, I wanted to be home on Sunday to make sure that I was prepped and packed for the trip, so that left me with only one day this weekend to get out hiking. My plans for last weekend had been thwarted by stormy weather in the high country, so I decided to retry part of those plans with a short hike into the Weminuche Wilderness from the end of the road on Lime Mesa between Silverton and Durango. As usual, I left right from work on Friday afternoon and headed south on the Million Dollar Highway and was able to watch the most recent storm system clearing out as I drove over Red Mountain Pass, Molas Pass and Coal Bank Pass through the heart of the San Juan Mountains. After reaching the very northern tip of the Animas River Valley I headed up the Missionary Ridge Road in search of a campsite to spend the night.

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The Crest of the Grand Mesa: Crag Crest Trail

Sunday, August 1, 2021

This was one of those rare weekends when my plans just didn’t work out at all. I was originally planning to spend most of the weekend trying to hike around the strong monsoon weather in the San Juan Mountains around Silverton, but after leaving work on Friday afternoon and almost making it to Red Mountain Pass, I was stopped by a mudslide that wasn’t going to be cleaned up for a while. I ended up driving back to Ouray figure out my next move, but with mudslides and road closures already common throughout the mountains and strong storms predicted for the rest of the weekend, I decided it was finally time for me to take a weekend off, so I headed back home.

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