After a couple of days civilizing in Durango, I drove back up the Million Dollar Highway into the San Juans. This time I intended to stay for a while. The San Juan Mountains are the largest range in the Rockies, containing seven different sub-ranges and six wilderness areas. No other range in the United States contains as much land above 10,000 feet, and nearly a dozen peaks exceed 14,000 feet.
The San Juan was once an enormous volcanic center, but it’s all erosional now, punctuated by granite intrusions and metamorphic uplift. The area was a huge mining region, predominantly silver and gold. One big gold mine was going strong until 1990 when its mine heap leached, sterilizing 17 miles of the Animas River, which flows south from the San Juan through Durango. The company declared bankruptcy and left the cleanup to the taxpayers, who are fighting a losing battle.
In Silverton I bought a $3 mountain rescue ticket, with the funds going to offset rescue costs and protect me from possibly being billed for any rescue I might require. It seems like a good idea to me. Just outside Silverton I headed off on a graded dirt road along South Fork Mineral Creek toward the Mineral Creek Campground. South Mineral Creek is classic-looking mountain creek, and if I’m reading the literature correctly, it is much less toxic and contains more life than the mainstem Mineral Creek or the Upper Animas.
Several large dispersed camping areas lined the road but most were filled with RVS and ATVs and looked uninviting for tent camping. It was only noon when I got to the campground but it was already nearly filled. I was too late for any of the spectacular sites along the creek, but I got a good enough site and was grateful for it. The campground sits at 9800’ and has a fine view over meadows to a dramatic red cliff. The road past the campground was popular with ATVs, and the campground hosts had to work hard to keep them from driving through the campground.
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| South Fork Mineral Creek |
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| View from campground |
Ice Lakes Basin
Mineral Creek Campground is right across the road from the trailhead for the Ice Lakes Basin trail, and the next day (Wednesday, July 15) I headed up there for my first real alpine hike of the summer. The hike was a real beaut from start to finish. The deep winter I had gazed upon from Warner Point a month earlier was now alive in brief idyllic alpine summer. Melting snowfields poured down in countless waterfalls, creating expansive wet meadows with the best alpine flowers I'd ever seen, by a long shot. Remarkably few mosquitoes. Imagine hiking a wildly flowered wet meadow in July in the Cascades; you'd need a blood transfusion.
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| Lower Ice Lakes Basin |
Upper Ice Lake was a brilliant icy-looking turquoise, sitting at 12,250’ in a basin enclosed by a long curving ridge of jagged volcanic pinnacles - Vermillion Peak (13,894 feet), Golden Horn (13,780 feet), Pilot Knob (13,738 feet) - all “carved from rhyolite ash-flow tuff”. The rock is crumbly, and rocky avalanche chutes spilled down the steep cliffs. I got excited and abandoned the trail to ascended the basin, wandering around trying to get some kind of perspective. Large snow patches, multi-colored rock, volcanic pinnacles, and of course a blue sky scudded with white clouds made for a surreal-type environment. Looking at the pictures even three years later I still have a hard time making visual sense of the place. It is a place I would love to return to.
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| Upper Ice Lake |
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| Pilot Cap |
Highland Mary Lakes
The next morning I was off at 6:30 AM for an hour’s drive out to Cunningham Gulch and the trailhead for Highland Mary Lakes. Once again I passed quite a bit of dispersed camping along the road; this is the predominant way to camp around here. My guidebook described the final mile to the trailhead as being tough. I gave it a try but my wheels started spinning out in first gear. So I retreated and parked down at the last flat, an old mill ruins. Rather than hike the road and all its switchbacks I scrambled up the rock the road cut through. I was 300 feet or so up very steep rocks when I realized I’d forgotten my sun hat. I had to make my way carefully back down and then clamber up once more. Only then did I spot a trail that made the same ascent much more gradually than the one that left me breathless.
After hiking about a mile up the road, I saw some tougher cars parked in a little parking area and I also spotted a trailhead sign, yet for some reason I decided that wasn’t the trailhead I was looking for. The trail guide had said something about turning the hike into a loop and I concluded very cursorily that this was the return trail and that I would find another trailhead further up the road. Furthermore I saw a lovely waterfall up the road and wanted to see that, so up I went. Thankfully it was still early enough in the day that the heat hadn't kicked in, as this road was steep and exposed. It never did provide a view of the waterfall.
No matter, I was soon in gorgeous meadows, the road giving way to a trail with enough similarities to the book’s trail description to keep me from accepting that I was not on it. At some point I entered the Weminuche Wilderness, the largest in Colorado. The landscape in front of me was an enormous wide-open expanse of green meadows and big bulby green hills. I could see some great-looking peaks in the mid-distance and a variety of trails out in the meadow heading toward them, so off I went. The trail I was following didn’t tend to remain intact, so I was cutting over here and cutting over there, basically wandering along a high ridge. I was above treeline, visibility was forever, so getting lost was barely an option. On I wandered.
Some significant outcrops poked above the meadows but mostly the landscape was rolling green hills. Some respectable snowfields bordered spectacular flower fields, and once more the bugs were remarkably light. I came upon an impressive cornice, even something that appeared to be a permanent snowfield. The deep blue Highland Mary Lakes were below me and the green ridge that rose beyond them comprised the continental divide, here mostly just another mass of green. It was sunny and gorgeous with a modest wind and no sign of a thunderstorm rising.
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Eventually I had to acknowledge the trails I had seen in the distance and the ones I'd been struggling to follow were not made by people but by marmots. They worked, but did not efficiently head toward the views, frequently opting for holes in the ground. I just kept heading for an overview of these mid-distance peaks but I kept getting skunked by intervening ridges, a frustration trails are often built to transcend.
Finally I attained a high point above a lake with a grant overview what I later learned was the Grenadier Range. Arrow and Vestal Peaks, in the high 13,000s, dominated the scene. These were steep quartzite, in sharp contrast to the green hill and dale I’d been hiking. Almost Yosemite-like, and in fact they are a magnet for climbers.
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| Grenadiers |
After staring lustily at the peaks for a while, I looked down at the lake and spotted a prone human body. It was dressed well, outdoors-speaking, but it was all by itself and totally still. I hate coming upon dead bodies in the wilderness. I picked a descent down the slope, and halfway down I spotted a gentleman fishing a hundred yards away from the body. Thank goodness, a matching pair. I went up to him with my anecdote, and he wasn’t not the slightest bit amused, but he did give me general directions for the trail I was looking for. I crossed an enormous flower field, wet and marshy - still no mosquitoes!
I approached three guys sitting above another lake and they helped sort things out a little for me. It seems I had reached Venda Lake, which was pretty much the end point of the Highland Mary Lakes trail, without having once stepped foot on the trail itself! These guys were getting ready to climb the trail's penultimate hill to gain the best vantage for the peaks I'd been working so hard to see, but I had hiked too much already, I knew. They in turn were impressed by the high route that I came in on; they said it must have been great. And I suppose it was.
I followed the real trail all the way back; it was a terrific trail and I somewhat regretted not having taken it in. Creeks, lakes, flowers. I actually took a snooze on the shore of one lake; try doing that in July in a wet meadow in the Cascades. Some waterfalls accompanied me in my descent to the trailhead. In fact the whole shebang is falling water. Another terrific hike.
Ouray
The next morning I made the short drive north on 550 from Silverton over 11,018’ Red Mountain Pass, the highest point on the Million Dollar Highway, then twelve miles down to Ouray at 7760‘. Ouray is more dominated by jeeps and ATVs than even Silverton, and calls itself the jeep capital of the world. I checked out two Forest Service campgrounds up the Box Canyon Road but they were very unattractive: no tables, rough, rough roads. Actually I don't know if one had tables, I couldn't get up its entry road. So I retreated and was lucky to get one of the last spots at the Amphitheater Campground, for $18. It was a short walk-in, with lots of privacy, and I stayed there for three nights.
7/18/09
My third and final hike in the San Juans was up to Blue Lakes Pass in the Sneffels Wilderness. Saturday. It was another terrific hike, making three in a row. The trail enters the basin via the West Fork Dallas Creek drainage, a tributary of the Uncompahgre River, (which in turn feeds the Colorado River). Through forest with views up to some lower peaks, into richly flowered meadows, then to the first in a stair step series of three blindingly turquoise lakes. Great weather again, no threat of thunderstorm - a rare trend. Lower Blue Lake is still partly in the trees, half protected by flowery wet meadows, and half by cirque rising sharply to peaks. The next two lakes are above timberline and surrounded by grassy slopes leading up scree slopes to looming peaks, some dark, some brightly mineralized. Tons of flowers. Rafts of flowers.
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At Upper Blue Lake I came upon my first rock glacier. (According to Benedict, some of the most spectacular rock glaciers in the world occur in the San Juan Mountains.) It is tongue-shaped like a glacier, with a glacier-like snout, feeding the unmistakably turquoise lake with silt-laden glacial water. But the “glacier” is made primarily of rock. Not like Mount Rainier’s Carbon Glacier, say, which is a thick body of moving ice mantled by a cloak of rock. A rock glacier is an accumulation of massive quantities of unsorted frost-riven rock debris that becomes cemented by ice and develops an inner ice core. It had me puzzled for quite a while: it had to be moving ice in order to make the lake so turquoise. But it’s not the ice that causes the silt - the ice melts - it is the pulverized rock. I could obviously understand this better.
Then final ascent to Blue Lakes Pass climbs steep switchbacks on slanted slippery trail, just dicey enough to be enjoyable. The pass is just shy of 13,000’, 3600‘ above the trailhead. From there I looked down on the fabled Yankee Boy Basin; slit through with jeep tracks, it looked like a dud to me. The loose jagged rocks comprising the south face of Mt. Sneffels weren‘t much to look at either. But back down where I came from, over Upper Blue Lakes and over to Gilpin and Dallas Peaks, now that was spectacular.
The first white explorers to document Blue Lakes Basin were A.D. Wilson, Franklin Rhoda, and Frederick Endlich of Ferdinand Hayden‘s 1873 Expedition. They came upon it from the San Miguel drainage, aiming to climb the highest peak in the region. Looking down upon the basin from a high pass, they thought of the great hole in the earth found in Jules Verne’s Journey to the Center of the Earth, and thus inspired named the high peak Mount Sneffels. Their expansive view did not include the narrow outflow of Dallas Creek which I had followed into the basin. They knew it must be there but could only see the nearly encompassing mountain ridge. “We could see no break in this great Chinese wall around this little empire of desolation and death-like stillness.“
Sneffels is a Fourteener, and so had drawn a crowd. The main ascent is up an obvious beaten dirt track from Yankee Boy Basin, and most of the hikers were using that. A smaller group was going directly up from Blue Lakes Pass itself, climbing sharp broken rock that looked like a nightmare to me; my hiking book specifically warned against it. I talked to a young couple sitting at the pass who had tried the scree but had turned back, disgusted with themselves. Well the guy was; I don’t think the girl cared that much. I asked him why he chose the difficult route and his answer surprised me. He did not go for difficulty on purpose; he misread his topo map and walked right by the obvious trail in pursuit of the one he believed he saw on the map. Ah well. He was a Colorado hiker so I asked him for some tips and he said head to the Collegiate Peaks.
In sum, three great alpine hikes in four days in the San Juans, and I felt pretty good. Clearly I could have spent a lot more time here. I could only glimpse longingly from the road into the sub range around Uncompahgre Peak as I drove back from Blue Lakes. But I had to be movin’ on., to the Sawatch Range and the Collegiate Peaks.
My third and final hike in the San Juans was up to Blue Lakes Pass in the Sneffels Wilderness. Saturday. It was another terrific hike, making three in a row. The trail enters the basin via the West Fork Dallas Creek drainage, a tributary of the Uncompahgre River, (which in turn feeds the Colorado River). Through forest with views up to some lower peaks, into richly flowered meadows, then to the first in a stair step series of three blindingly turquoise lakes. Great weather again, no threat of thunderstorm - a rare trend. Lower Blue Lake is still partly in the trees, half protected by flowery wet meadows, and half by cirque rising sharply to peaks. The next two lakes are above timberline and surrounded by grassy slopes leading up scree slopes to looming peaks, some dark, some brightly mineralized. Tons of flowers. Rafts of flowers.
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At Upper Blue Lake I came upon my first rock glacier. (According to Benedict, some of the most spectacular rock glaciers in the world occur in the San Juan Mountains.) It is tongue-shaped like a glacier, with a glacier-like snout, feeding the unmistakably turquoise lake with silt-laden glacial water. But the “glacier” is made primarily of rock. Not like Mount Rainier’s Carbon Glacier, say, which is a thick body of moving ice mantled by a cloak of rock. A rock glacier is an accumulation of massive quantities of unsorted frost-riven rock debris that becomes cemented by ice and develops an inner ice core. It had me puzzled for quite a while: it had to be moving ice in order to make the lake so turquoise. But it’s not the ice that causes the silt - the ice melts - it is the pulverized rock. I could obviously understand this better.
Then final ascent to Blue Lakes Pass climbs steep switchbacks on slanted slippery trail, just dicey enough to be enjoyable. The pass is just shy of 13,000’, 3600‘ above the trailhead. From there I looked down on the fabled Yankee Boy Basin; slit through with jeep tracks, it looked like a dud to me. The loose jagged rocks comprising the south face of Mt. Sneffels weren‘t much to look at either. But back down where I came from, over Upper Blue Lakes and over to Gilpin and Dallas Peaks, now that was spectacular.
The first white explorers to document Blue Lakes Basin were A.D. Wilson, Franklin Rhoda, and Frederick Endlich of Ferdinand Hayden‘s 1873 Expedition. They came upon it from the San Miguel drainage, aiming to climb the highest peak in the region. Looking down upon the basin from a high pass, they thought of the great hole in the earth found in Jules Verne’s Journey to the Center of the Earth, and thus inspired named the high peak Mount Sneffels. Their expansive view did not include the narrow outflow of Dallas Creek which I had followed into the basin. They knew it must be there but could only see the nearly encompassing mountain ridge. “We could see no break in this great Chinese wall around this little empire of desolation and death-like stillness.“
Sneffels is a Fourteener, and so had drawn a crowd. The main ascent is up an obvious beaten dirt track from Yankee Boy Basin, and most of the hikers were using that. A smaller group was going directly up from Blue Lakes Pass itself, climbing sharp broken rock that looked like a nightmare to me; my hiking book specifically warned against it. I talked to a young couple sitting at the pass who had tried the scree but had turned back, disgusted with themselves. Well the guy was; I don’t think the girl cared that much. I asked him why he chose the difficult route and his answer surprised me. He did not go for difficulty on purpose; he misread his topo map and walked right by the obvious trail in pursuit of the one he believed he saw on the map. Ah well. He was a Colorado hiker so I asked him for some tips and he said head to the Collegiate Peaks.
In sum, three great alpine hikes in four days in the San Juans, and I felt pretty good. Clearly I could have spent a lot more time here. I could only glimpse longingly from the road into the sub range around Uncompahgre Peak as I drove back from Blue Lakes. But I had to be movin’ on., to the Sawatch Range and the Collegiate Peaks.
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