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a quick hike in Ouray
May. 6th, 2015 03:09 pmI'm still getting over the cold I got while in Maryland (my third this spring, gah!) and my back is still giving me grief. But I'm trying not to let my stupid body prevent me from having fun.
This past weekend Britt and I went to a climate conference thingy in Paonia, a small town about 3.5 hours north of here. We have good friends who live there, so we stayed with them, which was nice. We headed back on Sunday and decided to stop more or less halfway home, in Ouray, which I think is the most beautiful setting for a town in Colorado (and the second prettiest in the US, behind Seward, Alaska). As you can see in this picture we took from our hike above town:
Ouray is famous for many things, including its natural hot springs. We checked into a nice small motel, the Wiesbaden, which features not just hot pools but also a vapor cave under the building, which used to be a sanitarium for treatment of arthritis. Despite the dicey weather we went for a hike; sure enough, we got rained on on the way back, but we warmed up in the hot spring water!
The trail we climbed (and I do mean climbed - my map-corrected GPS track claims we ascended over 2500 vertical feet in 2.6 miles before turning around) goes to the upper Cascade Falls and the Chief Ouray Mine, but we had to turn around less than half a mile from the end because the trail hit a deep snowbank on a steep slope, and proceeding would not have been safe. But we did get some good exercise as well as interesting photos.
( More photos! )
Anyway, good preparation for this summer's first backpack trip which will be in just five weeks!
This past weekend Britt and I went to a climate conference thingy in Paonia, a small town about 3.5 hours north of here. We have good friends who live there, so we stayed with them, which was nice. We headed back on Sunday and decided to stop more or less halfway home, in Ouray, which I think is the most beautiful setting for a town in Colorado (and the second prettiest in the US, behind Seward, Alaska). As you can see in this picture we took from our hike above town:
Ouray is famous for many things, including its natural hot springs. We checked into a nice small motel, the Wiesbaden, which features not just hot pools but also a vapor cave under the building, which used to be a sanitarium for treatment of arthritis. Despite the dicey weather we went for a hike; sure enough, we got rained on on the way back, but we warmed up in the hot spring water!
The trail we climbed (and I do mean climbed - my map-corrected GPS track claims we ascended over 2500 vertical feet in 2.6 miles before turning around) goes to the upper Cascade Falls and the Chief Ouray Mine, but we had to turn around less than half a mile from the end because the trail hit a deep snowbank on a steep slope, and proceeding would not have been safe. But we did get some good exercise as well as interesting photos.
( More photos! )
Anyway, good preparation for this summer's first backpack trip which will be in just five weeks!