SW Colorado (Ouray / Ridgway) dayhike suggestions

[Ian Schumann]

Hi folks 👋🏻

Hoping I can get feedback from people in SW Colorado, or at least people familiar with hikes in that area.

Next week my wife and I are heading up to Ouray / Ridgway for 4 days of car camping, with the hope of stuffing in a series of good dayhikes while we’re there. We’re in decent shape and have been in the mountains before (me especially) but I’m sure we’ll spend the first 1-2 days acclimating our central-Texan bodies to the altitude. For transit, we’ve got a 2WD Honda CRV, which I expect will cut off a few of the possible highlights in the area, but not all of them.

<b>What I’d like:</b>

• Favorite options for long / challenging hikes (even climbing 14ers in the area, etc.)
• Favorite options for shorter / easier hikes (acclimating or warming up, etc.)
• Notes on road conditions vs. our non-4WD vehicle
• Any other personal non-hiking highlights would be welcome too — must-try restaurants in the evenings, things like that.

An example of “road conditions vs our vehicle”: it appears we could attack Mt. Sneffels and/or the Blue Lakes from Yankee Boy Basin, but it isn’t clear to me whether we can safely get high enough on that drive for the hike to be a reasonable length. I see a lot of jeeps / offroad tours go up that road, and it looks like some passenger vehicles have stopped at the intersection with Governor Basin Road, with the drivers hiking the rest of the way up. If anybody has been up this road / done these hikes, I’d love to hear feedback.

Thanks in advance, folks!

[Ian Schumann]

Another idea for the Blue Lakes / Mt Sneffels area is to come from the north, per this blog post. I threw together a Hillmap to sketch out a visit to the lakes:

http://www.hillmap.com/m/ag1zfmhpbGxtYXAtaGRychULEghTYXZlZE1hcBiAgICW46SsCww

Maybe this is a better approach option for our 2WD vehicle?

Meanwhile a different area I’m looking into is the Uncompaghre Wilderness to the east of Ridgway. I see Courthouse Mountain could make for a shorter / acclimation hike, and a longer trip to Wetterhorn Basin (and/or Peak?) could be a challenging most-of-the-day trip.

Thoughts on this area?

Again, just exposing some of my thinking, seeing if someone has better intel.

If there are other areas within striking distance that I just must check out, please holler!

[Ian Schumann]

Ah well … I found this:

http://www.hikingwalking.com/destinations/co/co_sw/

… Which might honestly be all I need 😏

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