39 Days, 10 States, 2 Kids – Colorado II
With Crestone in our rear view, we headed northwest into the vast, flat, San Luis Valley before being squeezed out of the valley and back into the mountains. We started out on pavement today before picking up the gravel Marshall Pass road that goes over the continental divide. So far we have not seen rain on this trip, and as such the dry trails have not even required four wheel drive. Marshall Pass was no different. There were a couple of areas with big drop offs, but generally it was just a bumpy rock road with beautiful views.
The bigger concern everywhere from Oklahoma to the west coast on this route is forest fires. To our west the Durango 416 fire caused the closure of the entire San Juan National Forest, meaning we may not be able to try and hike up to Ice Lake near Silverton. As a result of the dry weather fire bans have been in place everywhere we have been since OK meaning no campfires or charcoal grilling for us.
Being on a mountain trail again allowed us to find a place to pull off and have lunch by a creek. The kids threw rocks and had stick races, while I enjoyed my lawn chair. Kari, deciding it was too cold, ate in the truck.
Moving on down the trail, we eventually picked up pavement again in order to go and see the Black Canyon of the Gunnison National Park.
By now we are on our 7th day of the trip, have stayed in six different places, and things are becoming a little more routine as far as waking, eating, loading up, and hitting the trail. The RV park/campground/cabin we are staying at, has coin operated washing machines which means we can have clean clothes. Kari is a little concerned about strategic laundry stops along the way, so hopefully it works out.
We check in at the campground, get our cabin and chat with the campground host, who urged us to go ahead and go to Black Canyon now, and again in the morning since the different lighting would make a difference on how the canyon looks.
Taking his advice, we headed out, and were able to check out some of the overlooks before running into Montrose for dinner.
The sun was setting when we got back to the campground. Luckily, the laundry worked well, so Kari put clothes in, while I watched the kids play in the grass under the setting sun with the mountain backdrop. At this moment, the trip seems perfect.
Since the laundry was done, the morning required a repack of all of our bags. To keep Kari from having a breakdown, I set up the hammock outside so the kids could play and leave her alone to repack.
We hit the road and spent a few hours hiking at the Black Canyon before continuing on to Ouray for the night. Ouray is a cool little town that I would definitely like to revisit and spend more time at in the future. We did not have time to let the kids swim in the hot springs due to our schedule so we walked to dinner and let them sit in the hot tub before crashing for the night.
Just outside of Ouray is a four wheel drive road into Yankee Boy Basin. We aimed Jethro up the trail, and took in the sights as we explored and found another creek to have lunch by. This time there was a waterfall too. Even though there was still not any rain to make going difficult, the inclines and rocks made me use 4 low.
Stay to the right. 
The elevation puffed our bag
After enjoying half of the day in Yankee Boy Basin, we took the Million Dollar Highway from Ouray to Silverton. It turns out that Silverton is a tourist destination for day trips, and not overnight stays so much. By dark, most of the side by sides, 4 wheelers and jeeps have gone off to nicer places while we stayed behind in our VRBO apartment, in a very crooked building built in 1895.
There was no air conditioning in the apartment. Being at an elevation of over 9,300′ it rarely gets warm enough to need ac, except when we were there… The apartment faces the west so the sun had warmed the place up enough that we needed the windows open all night. There were also no screens in the windows, and a part of the window frame fell to the sidewalk below when I was opening one of them. Good news is this is the first place on our trip that we are staying for two nights.
Backpacks loaded, and hiking poles ready, we set out for the trailhead to Ice Lake. Fortunately for us, the San Juan NF was reopened the day before, so we could go in and see if we had enough stamina to make it all the way up to the lake. Knowing that this would take us several hours, we decided that beef jerky, granola bars, and various other snacks would be our lunch.
Starting at an elevation of 9,850′, and climbing to over 12,400′ this trail is no joke for flatlanders like us. As such, we promised the kids they could get ice cream back in Silverton if they made it 2000 vertical feet, and a stuffed animal from the next national park gift shop if they made it all the way to the lake. Already realizing that we might be the weak link, they also negotiated that they get all of the rewards if Kari or I were the ones that decided to turn back before the top.
Crossing creeks, and gaining elevation the trail started off fine enough, but as we climbed and climbed the going got slower. We soon learned that stopping was not an option because mosquitoes the size of hummingbirds would swarm us. Our 7% DEET did not seem to deter them. We had to snack and drink while we walked.
Reaching the lower basin, the wind offered us reprieve from the mosquitoes, and was pretty enough to be a reward if we made it no further up. Pretty tired at this point, and seeing that we still had to climb out of this basin to get to Ice Lake, we all decided to push on and see if we could make it.
Huffing our way up the rocky slope we finally reached a plateau where the trail leveled out and continuing on I caught a glimpse of the Gatorade blue water that nearly gave me tears of joy. Words can not describe the beauty of this place – bright blue water surrounded by towering peaks, and I was proud that our normal family made it.
It was hard, somewhat miserable, and Alli spent a good percentage of the time whining about the mosquitoes. On our way out in Jethro we passed a group of girls with a flat tire on their little SUV and stopped to help. When researching the hiking trail, I noticed that there was another trail to Clear Lake, that we could have drove up in Jethro. Looking at some of the pictures, I thought we would pass on this somewhat rough driving trail and do the hiking trail instead. The girls we were now helping had drove up the trail to Clear Lake in this little SUV with normal street tires, proving that I am more of a sissy than I thought. It did shred one of there tires though, and the others didn’t look good, so we put on the spare and cautioned them to drive slowly to wherever they were going until they could get new tires.
After another night in our crooked apartment, with the workers from the bar across the street smoking their weed on the sidewalk below, we packed up and headed out to explore some ghost towns and old gold mines. The gold mine museum outside Silverton was pretty cool, and had some surprisingly dangerous equipment that the kids could press buttons to make operate. It was refreshing to see something, open to the public, requiring common sense to not become an amputee still exists in America.
The ghosttown at Animas forks has buildings that you can walk around in and imagine what it would have been like to live up in a mining village. Being at the intersection of several popular trails, it was pretty bust with Jeeps, side by sides, four wheelers, and Jethro.
Moving on to Telluride, we took a shortcut on a rocky trail called Ophir Pass. After crossing the pass, you can see for miles down the trail, which is a good thing, because if anything is coming, you just need to wait for them to pass rather than passing on the narrow shelf of a road. It was interesting.
Telluride was a full three night stay for us. A mini vacation to relax, and enjoy the area for a while. The free gondola was cool, and free, so we rode it three times a day. We found a trail to explore another old mining area, and learned that our water pipes at home broke and ruined part of the house. Link to story – Oh No, Water Leaks!
The kids argued, Alli spilled hot coffee on me, and Kari and I went for a walk by ourselves. Vacation! At one point the sky got smokey, the sun turned dark orange in the middle of the day and ashes started to fall on us. It turns out it wasn’t a sign to leave the kids behind, it was from the Durango fire nearly 100 miles to our south.
Next we head to a VRBO in western CO on an 800 acre cattle ranch…
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