If you caught the last post, you know I visited Colorado for a month, and I spent the first 10 days in Rocky Mountain National Park. The rest of the trip was a bit of a whirlwind through the Front Range, then down to the San Juan Mountains in the southwestern part of the state (think Ouray, Silverton, and Durango). We also ducked down into New Mexico for a few hikes, so we didn’t spend all of our time in the mountains. The scenery was all great (much better than RMNP), so I’m very excited to share a few of the pictures with you here!
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I’ll just say it quickly: Rocky Mountain National Park does not have the best scenery in Colorado. Not even close. Get outside the park and head west/south, and the views improve dramatically. I intentionally planned the trip so that we would visit the national park first and save the better views for the second half of the trip. That all said, we did find some great views in the national park – the scenery is just more dramatic elsewhere in the Rocky Mountains. Now that I’ve had my rant, I’ll get on to what we saw… outside Rocky Mountain National Park!
The weather was (finally!!) good for a couple of days, so we did two hikes in the Front Range. First, up James Peak from the Loch Lomond Reservoir. I’ve wanted to do this hike for a long time, ever since climbing St. Mary’s Glacier back in 2010.
The next day, we climbed Colorado Mines Peak and then Mount Flora. We started hiking the traditional way, then our driver met us on a dirt road on the other side of the peak. I’m not sure I’d do it that way again (hiking the dirt road was crazy, and it wasn’t just the side-by-side drivers!), but the views were incredible!
Rain and clouds moved in, so we spent the next day driving down to Ouray. Along the way, we stopped at the Penny Hot Springs. They’re free; just along the side of the road… but they’re also popular enough. We had a great time soaking in the rock pools.
I wanted to hike the Bridge of Heaven, but sadly, a fire last summer closed both the road to the trailhead and the trail, itself. With no better idea of how to spend a day that was predicted to be mostly cloudy, we opted to hike to Columbine Lake. Let me say this: It was the best decision we could have made. Despite snow on the trail. Despite the clouds. Despite a river crossing so we couldn’t get the van to the trailhead. Every view we saw, we’d think, “Well, it can’t get any better than this!” and then the next view would leave us speechless. The crowning touch were the snowy reflections in the lake – like something out of a stock photo site only real enough with the wind biting our faces!
The next day really was rainy, so we drove down to the Durango & Silverton Railroad Museum. It was quite interesting (and free!), even if there was a lot in there that had nothing to do with railroading! (A dinosaur skeleton, anyone? How about an early airplane, a calliope, a stuffed owl, and a replica of the gun that shot Abraham Lincoln?)
Then we drove over to Mesa Verde National Park for the afternoon. It sprinkled on us a little, just enough for us to be glad for our big yellow raincoats. We could have taken a tour, but instead, we opted to enjoy the views from the overlooks on a self-guided adventure.
Sunshine came – finally! My number one hike I wanted to do in the San Juans was up to Ice Lake. It didn’t disappoint!
The second hike I really wanted to do was to drive as far as possible up toward Yankee Boy Basin and then hike up to Blue Lakes Pass from the basin side (you might recall I hiked the pass from the Blue Lakes side a couple of years ago). We made it to the High Clearance Trailhead (the worst part was a stream crossing about a mile from the signboards), then had a glorious hike through alpine meadows, past a glacier, and among incredible mountain views up to the pass.
We spent a couple of days in Silverton. One day we did a hike up above the town.
A highlight was watching the Durango & Silverton Railroad locomotives come and go! We even witnessed a very sweet engagement happen beside the locomotive.
Our next hike was through a mountain bike park. Located on the edge of Durango, it’s a favorite with trail runners, too. Some of the trail was pretty crazy in terms of steepness, but Skid Ridge still made a great little hike (and we could see the downpour up in the mountains while the sun kept shining over the city).
From there, we headed down to De-Na-Zin Wilderness – similar to Bisti Wilderness. We got highly distracted from the trail marked on my GPS, found amazing badlands and rock formations, and ended the day trying to follow the trail and finding the trail wasn’t very easy to follow! Oh, well… we still made it back 10 something miles later.
One of our favorite free campgrounds is Angel Peak. It has amazing sunsets… even if the wind from an approaching storm nearly blew our supper off the picnic table. We ate in the van!
The next morning, we headed out on the Angle Peak Trail (which takes you on a ridgeline near Angel Peak, not to the peak itself). We had to turn around due to difficulty scrambling back in 2003. But this time, we easily made it all the way to the end of the ridge. (Well, easily might be pushing it. There was that one section about eight inches wide with sheer drops on both sides…)
On our way back up to southern Colorado, we stopped at Aztec Ruins National Monument for lunch. And while you’re there, you might as well enjoy walking through the ruins.
In Durango, we enjoyed walking the Animas River Trail. Very peaceful, though there were quite a few walkers, runners, and cyclists.
Our last (but not least!) major hike was up Parrott Peak from La Plata Canyon (free campgrounds up in there!) The trail was 100% either ATV roads or social paths, and the grade was insane, but the views. Wow!
And that’s the end of the trip! I hiked a total of just over 200 miles with 48,000ft. of elevation gain… I’m not sure if my legs are now very strong or very tired!
Be on the lookout for these hikes to appear on the blog in the upcoming months! I also post more photos than I’d ever be able to put on the blog over on my Patreon page.
More hikes in Colorado
Want more amazing trails in Colorado? Check out this book with some of my favorites!
