Went to Ouray

[Sir Sam]

Chatted with this guy in the RRC for a few minutes, he had a imported 90 at home.

Just some trees at my campsite:

Hard to see the forest through the trees:

Oh there it is:

Went on a hike I had never done before that connected some different Jeep roads I had been on before on both ends.

Dogs got hot and were taking any tiny bit of shade they could find:

[Sir Sam]

I took a few 360 panoramas while I was out:

https://360.io/xy22CL

https://360.io/mNt2JE

https://360.io/MFEQGr

https://360.io/hHXcfD

[Sir Sam]

Took a very short hike to the Ouray Hydroelectric dam, I had never seen it before and only recently found it on google earth. 

Then I went down to the bridge over the creek below the dam:

[Sir Sam]

Then I did a hike I have wanted to do for a long time.....to the "sign" structure on the top of McMillian peak.

[Sir Sam]

For anyone wondering about the "sign" I believe its supposed to be a passive repeater, though likely long defunct:

https://www.valmontstructures.com/products-solutions/communications-structures/passive-repeaters

 

Then I did another hike I was curious about to a mine I had already been to, and it turned out to be a loop with a cool surprise at the end. Very neat to discover this hiking out in the woods with no idea it was there. 

We started off of 550 a little above the Ironton townsite.

And followed an old road:

Found an old boarding house:

This is old water pipe, its made similar to how old barrel were made, wood fittied together and wrapped in wire!

Found an outhouse:

Found a boiler a little below the American Girl mine:

Then went up to the American Girl Mine, uphill a little further, and then started following a different trail back down that was supposed to cut back to where we started. It started off like a road but quickly turned into this:

You can see the old ties still in place. Around these mines you will see lots of ties still around but the ore car track removed since it was useful and could be reused. So we were following a path with lots of old ties, narrow, and headed downhill to unknown destination.

And then at the end we found.......it was the old rail road line we had been following.....I had no idea since it seemed like it was too narrow even for narrow guage.

And then what is left of the turn table. 

I made a video about the hike and some different views.....which is kinda long, here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=curPpO1TYAQ

And the first part of the hike:
https://youtu.be/_88f-EovVUU

[Sir Sam]

Then we took a hike to a hotspring.....which wasn't very hot right now. But comfortable. My dad got a quick scrub in the water:

You can see the highway a ways below us:

This was our campsite, nicely tucked away. There was a fair bit of flat ground so we were able to park level for sleeping. No fires allowed otherwise we would have had great fires there.

And.....while walking back from a dump I found someones trash dump, from last year I think. Fukkin nasty man, they went to the trouble to bag this crap up and then tossed it just far enough away to be out of sight. People suck man, and they get the places that I want to be closed down by trashing them.

So we bagged it up and left the site better than we found it:

[Sir Sam]

Then I went and just tried to take some cool pictures of the Land Rover on the last day before we had to drive home.

Its hard to take a bad photo in these here parts:

[Sir Sam]

Then I flew the drone up and around to get some pictures from up high:

And then back to the scenery while we had some lunch:

Jetboil up some chicken Jalapeno dogs:

Then time to go home:

[Pete M]

beautiful!  the mountains are full of cool stuff.   

[grouch]

Great pictures of some beautiful country. The town of Ouray is JEEP town. We lived for several years in Montrose, CO (a little North of Ouray).

[Smokeyyank]

Sweet pics man! Good on you for taking out other people's $h*t. Frustrating as hell that people just trash the outdoors. We live by some BLM and it's always and issue with people going there and leaving fires going with trash everywhere. Fn idiots. 

[87Warrior]

You always share the Ouray area beautifully. Thanks for sharing.

 

Someday I'll muster up the energy to hike to the Corkscrew Turntable...Someday. 

[Sir Sam]

4 hours ago, 87Warrior said:

You always share the Ouray area beautifully. Thanks for sharing.

 

Someday I'll muster up the energy to hike to the Corkscrew Turntable...Someday. 

 

The way I did it hiking up from 550 was a great way to do it. A little bit of uphill and then all downhill, was a really nice hike. You could do it shorter by just going from 550 to the turntable, its a very gentle grade that way.