Itinerary
Sunday August 26th: Arrival day. No trail rides are planed. Get checked into your motel in Ouray. (Motel recommendations on the first post). If you have spare time check out the shops or take a walk in Box Canyon. It's a park in the SW corner of town with a paid admission but it's worth it. At 7:00 pm we will meet at O'Brien's Pub at 726 Main St. for dinner, drinks and jeep talk.
Monday August 27th: After breakfast we'll dive right in to show you what four-wheeling in Colorado is like. We will head a few miles south of Ouray and take Lower Engineer Trail. As we leave highway 550 we will lock our hubs, shift into 4WD Low and maybe air down (I have CO2 if you are worried about airing back up). The trail will be rough right from the start. It will be slow going. Lots of rocks and some off camber places where your jeep will tilt to the downhill slope but it really isn't too difficult. There are some obsticales but they all have by-passes. I love this trail. Not easy enough for your grandma but not hard either. You will get the feeling you are getting deep into rugged terrain. Eventually we will rise above the tree line and head up and over Engineer Pass. Here you will feel like you are on top of the world.
We will have to back track a couple of miles. Once we get back to the fork for Lower Engineer Pass road we will turn to the left. Next stop Animas Forks Ghost town. There are several ghost towns around here this is one of my favorites. This Town is at over 11000 feet high in the mountains. It is usually winter this high. It's a beautiful place in the summer but the summer is only a couple of months up this high.
By now we will be thinking about going back to town. We will head back behind Animas forks into California Gulch. (a lot of these places are named after the miner's homes). We will go over California Pass then over Hurrican Pass. We will decend a little before going back up over Corkscrew Pass and down to highway 550. Then we will head back to Ouray.
Lower Engineer Pass Trail
Tuesday August 28th: Now things get exciting. Today: Black Bear Pass & Imogene Pass. After Breakfast we will head south on 550 a few miles to Red Mountain Pass. This is the 9th highest paved mountain pass in the US but we have only started our upward travel. This is an easy trail. That is easy UNTIL we start our decent. That's when thing get interesting. This trail gets down right scarry. It's not really hard but we are going down a 5000 foot cliff. If you go off the trail you will fall 1000 feet. If this sounds too scary you can take Ophir Pass to meet us in Telluride.
At the bottom we will be in Telluride. Time for lunch in one of the bars or restaurants. We will head back to Ouray over Imogene Pass. This is a longer trail than Black Bear but it dumps us our right into Ouray.
Black Bear Pass with Telluride in the background
Wednesday August 29th: Today we will take Browns Gulch trail. This is a high altitude trail that runs above highway 550. It is not difficult but it is beautiful. We will be able to see the highway far below us (yes the one that is the 9th highest highway in the US). We will get back on the highway for a short distance near Silverton. Then we will head back up a 4x4 trail to Clear Lake. After that we will have dinner at a Siverton Restaurant.
Clear Lake
I didn't want to do this trail too early in the week in case someone broke something. But today's the day for Poughkeepsie Gulch.
If you are not up to it I can point you to another route to meet us at the top. Poughkeepsie Gulch is a difficult trail and it's mainly because of the obstacle at the top. If it's too much for you then you can be winched up.
Poughkeepsie Gulch
We will head to Bear Town Site. Up above Bear Town site we will go to Kite Lake.
Kite Lake above Bear Town Site
Travel day to get back home.
