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Ouray Trails: Sutton Mine Trail

Sunday, June 12, 2016

June is that time of year when the desert starts getting too hot for me and I start looking towards the mountains. After hiking Professor Creek on Saturday, I thought it would be nice to drive down to Ouray on Sunday for my first mountain hike of the season. Diane had school work to get done on Sunday so I would be on my own this time. I decided to start with an easier hike and chose the Sutton Mine Trail which is just outside of town and only about 4.5 miles round trip with about 1,500 feet of elevation gain. While this trail is called the Sutton Mine Trail, the main trail does not actually climb up to the Sutton Mine and instead ends at the Neosho Mine. If you’ve ever driven over Red Mountain Pass between Ouray and Silverton, you might have noticed a building with an ‘Antiques’ sign on it near the Bear Creek bridge. That is the final destination of this trail and is part of the Neosho Mine.

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Red Mountain Colors

Fall Colors 2015 | Saturday, September 26, 2015

As usual, I spent the last weekend in September on my annual fall colors trip to photograph the changing of the seasons in the high country of Colorado. Instead of going away for the whole weekend, this time I just headed out on a day trip to the San Juan Mountains. From reports I had seen online, plus my trip last weekend, it appeared that the Red Mountain Pass area was changing colors nicely at this time, so that’s where I decided to go. Unfortunately, Diane wasn’t feeling well this weekend, so she ended up staying home today.

Abrams Mountain & Cimarron Thirteeners

Saturday & Sunday, September 19-20, 2015

On my quest to hike and explore more of the Uncompahgre Wilderness I decided to climb a pair of thirteeners in The Cimarrons along the high ridge that towers between the West Fork and the Middle Fork of the Cimarron River. The peaks along this ridge are prominent landmarks on the horizon every time I drive south into the San Juan Mountains and it was time to finally get a closer look.

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San Luis Peak in the La Garita Mountains

San Luis Peak in the La Garita Mountains

Saturday & Sunday, September 12-13, 2015

Since Diane needed to stay home this weekend to get some school work done, I was on my own and decided to climb my sixth and final new fourteener of the year. After looking over my maps I settled on hiking to the summit of San Luis Peak (14,014) in the La Garita Mountains near Creede. Instead of taking the standard route up Stewart Creek from the northeast, I chose to follow the Continental Divide Trail north of Creede to the south ridge. Not only is this route a little shorter, I also thought the views along the Continental Divide would be better. Plus, I had never really stopped in Creede before and thought this would be a good opportunity to check out the area.

Big Blue Creek

Labor Day Weekend | Saturday – Monday, September 5-7, 2015

This year for the long Labor Day weekend I wanted to go on another backpacking trip into the Uncompahgre Wilderness of Colorado’s San Juan Mountains, but I also wanted to go somewhere that was unlikely to be crowded since this is probably one of the busiest camping weekends of the year. After some research I selected the Big Blue Creek drainage as our destination. Not only was there very little information about this area online and in guides, which hopefully meant it wouldn’t be very crowded, but I was also hoping to photograph the north face of Uncompahgre Peak (14,309) at sunrise since I hadn’t seen too many photos of this massive mountain from that side. I had originally thought about connecting the Fall Creek and Failes Creek trails to create a big loop hike but changed that idea so that I would be able to spend two mornings photographing Uncompahgre Peak to help improve my chances of catching a great sunrise.

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Tag: rocky mountains

Ouray Trails: Sutton Mine Trail

Red Mountain Colors

Abrams Mountain & Cimarron Thirteeners

San Luis Peak in the La Garita Mountains

Big Blue Creek