Durango / Silverton

For my birthday I decided to take Ambereen to Durango for a backpacking trip. We left on Friday and drove to Durango which is in the Southwestern corner of CO. We took the scenic route so we came in from near Silverton and entered the San Juan Range - spectacular! The mountains looked so different from what I've seen.

Found a great campground outside of town and set up camp then drove in to town for some dinner. Got back and built a fire - rare these days. Got some sleep then made it to the train station in the AM to catch the Durango Silverton Narrow Guage. It's the real deal - coal fired steam powered locomotive. We boarded and settled in for the trip to the Needlton stop where the backpackers exit.

6 mile hike with a 3,000' elevation gain (challenging for most - trust me) and we set up camp at 11,000'. Got some shut-eye so we could attempt a fourteener in the am. Hit the trail at 8:30 (that time will be relevant later) and hiked for a few hours until we got to Twin Lakes. Ran into a few hikers on their way down. Hikers (experienced ones anyways) have a funny habit of not telling you what to do or what they think you should do. Instead they'll give cues like asking where you're going and when you tell them they nod, look at their watch, look at you, look at their watch and say something like "good luck". Which really means "you should have gotten your ass out of the tent three hours earlier than you did, dumbass". Lesson learned. We made it to the saddle next to Windom Peak (one of the three fourteeners in the immediate area) when Trevor (whom we met on the train) came bounding down having bagged Windom and Sunlight that morning. He told us about the clouds he saw and how ominous they looked. I had a discussion with Ambereen about turning around. Let's just say one of us is a little more conservative than the other. After 15 minutes of talking about it, we turned around just as two hikers came screaming down from near the peak and thunder roared through the valley. Let's just say we made it down a hell of a lot faster than we made it up. Got back to the tent and took a long nap. Made dinner and went to bed - it's hard work hiking that shit! Got up the next morning and hiked back to the pickup point where we flagged down the train - which kept on going....turns out it was the early train running way late - so we caught the next one. Cool ride to Silverton where we had lunch and I got a few birthday gifts (metal sculptures) from a local artist. Wish I took a pic of him and his shop.