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Wednesday 10 August 2011

Telluride



Then on to Ken's house in Telluride and his and Samire's unending hospitality. For three days we were spoiled, great breakfasts including the very best Japanese breakfast I have ever had, good company, an entertaining walk with a wild flower expert and a fun fun hike up above 10000 ft and into the snow line. 


I loved Telluride it had a bit of everything. The skiing was obviously big business the infra structure was there to support it, and the town was small, politically active, left wing and entertaining. The hike we did involved along drive up a very rocky dirt road to the trailhead. It started well enough with a beautiful walk through the trees and up alongside the river. The steepness of the trail combined with the elevation meant both Sarah and I were soon out of breath and despite Samire's opinion that she hiked slowly she was soon out of site. We climbed on until we came to a river crossing. A crossing that normally had a log laid across the stream as a makeshift bridge. On his day there was 15 ft of water to dance over on stepping stones or as both Samire's and Sarah chose to do to simply hike through. This should have been our warning but we were too stupid to heed it. 10 minutes later we were seeing snow at the side of the trail and 10 minutes after that we were clambering over our first easy snow. We soon came to a steep section of snow only about 15 ft wide but involving some big steps up.

Despite some misgivings we all made it across and from then on it was a case of hiking a short distance, scrambling over snow for a short distance until we got to the waterfall which was very noisy and very beautiful, but the way to the lake was blocked with snow on a camber for about 10 yards. It was clear that this obstacle was one too many so we sat down less than 1/2 mile from the lake and are our lunch before returning to the car. When we got to the car our adventure was not over. A note on the windshield said 'passenger side front tyre flat :('

Sarah read the manual while Ken and I did the hard labour. 45 minutes later we had the spare in place and everything back in the boot (sorry trunk) of the jeep.

After a couple of tries we got the tyre replaced in Montrose on our way to Gunnison where we set up camp at the tall Texan campground.

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