Day 7 - Ridgway to Lake City…and why I now hate Gunnison CO!
Thursday morning started out as a beautiful day. This was a part of the trip I’d been looking most forward to, getting down past Ouray, the Million Dollar Hwy and Corkscrew to Lake City. After brewing a quick cup of coffee and packing up the RTT, I left the hot springs and drove to Ouray. It’s a really pretty little town and much less of a richie rich crap show than Telluride. I stopped for fuel and a few supplies, then grabbed breakfast at this little hippy cafe called the Backstreet Bistro..ordered the Caprese omelette and it was awesome!
As I left Ouray and started down Million Dollar Hwy it became apparent why the speed limit is 25mph. The scenery is breathtaking and the road is very narrow and windy with zero shoulder extremely sharp drops that descend hundreds of feet in same places should you lose a wheel. About 6 miles south of Ouray is the turn-off to Corkscrew. I pulled out the GPS and brought up the COBDR track I’d downloaded for this section. This was key because man are there a lot of spurs that can be taken! Doing this solo with no GPS is doable so long as you don’t care what town you wind up in…but if you have a destination to make, GPS is the ticket. As I worked my way up the first pass it was pretty mellow in terms of people. But after that first pass the FJ Summit people started coming out of the woodwork….like what seemed like hundreds of them….one after the other.
Due to the traffic, it was pretty slow going…and because I was solo it made more sense for me to pull over and let the big groups pass…so there was lots of waiting. The first high pass was Hurricane where had it not been for the plow work that had been done on the north side, it would still be impassable. Hurricane is 12,730ft and commands amazing views including a crystal blue/green alpine lake below it.
I stopped at the old mining ghost town of Animas Forks…it’s pretty cool and well in tact. I would have loved to have spent more time there, but it was crawling with people…and I hate people….especially ones in FJ Cruisers with man buns and disk earrings…so I carried on to Cinnamon pass. As I started up Cinnamon I was blocked by a stalled Ford Ranger. The driver was this girl in her 20’s who was out by herself on her day off for a drive around the mountains (I thought that was cool). The truck would start but as soon as she put it in gear it would die. I told her to pop the hood and fortunately the problem was an easy fix…Under the hood was an aftermarket air filter with the MAS air sensor screwed onto the aluminum tube that had blow off…a few turns of a screw later and we were off. She followed me the rest of the trip out incase something else happened.
As we headed up Cinnamon I started seeing Marmot’s…like more than I’ve ever seen at one time in my life. I love Marmot’s…I don’t know what it is about these little buggers that makes me smile so much, but they do. Normally they are pretty reclusive and will retreat to the nearest hole as you approach them, but these guys were like Lake Tahoe bears…zero fear of people. I sat there are a few minutes and chatted with the first two. One was gnawing on a metal drainage culvert while the other stood up and checked me out…like literally 3 feet from my truck. He starred me down a while before reverting back to digging the hole he was working on, looking back and me every few seconds to see if I approved of his work.
The rest of the trip down from Cinnamon was uneventful until I hit the boney part in the lower elevation section. A slight rattle coming from the front end of my truck started to become more pronounced. I had checked every nut and bolt on this thing before I left, and it’s not like this is hard wheeling, nor was I hammering on my rig. I stopped at a clear flat spot and did a thorough visual on everything….came up with nada. So I pressed on looking for a place to camp.
I passed through Lake City and headed north on 149 for Gunnison. I figured either I would find a place to camp, or end up at a hotel in Gunnison. Either way, I wanted to get this thing on a lift first thing in the AM and find that damn rattle. About 15 miles out of Lake City I blew past a sign for a BLM campground and slammed on the brakes, threw it into reverse and went to check it out. What a find! There were just a handful of spots, all a few feet from the Gunnison river and there was virtually nobody there.
I posted up in spot #3 and placed my $5 camp fee in the post. This place was amazing…”primitive” camping at it’s best. I waited for the late afternoon T-storm to blow through before i set up camp as I knew it would be short lived. I poured a cocktail and just watched the lighting show…it was awesome. As the storm passed and hunger set in, I pulled some food out of the ARB fridge and set up my “stealth” kitchen which consists of a single white gas burner, my cast iron pan, a knife and tongs. I had brought a large action packer with my 22” cook partner stove, cast griddle and all the kitchen gadgets you could think of….this box weighs a crap ton and I have not used it yet…every night has been in stealth mode. Note to self…less is more
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As I ate diner I noticed a lower tooth was super sore and irritated. I had smashed 3 of my lower teeth playing hockey as a kid and have had several triple root canals over 30 years trying to save these teeth. A last ditch endodontics surgery was performed 2 years ago and I was told it was 50/50 if it would work. Well last night it failed on this one tooth. I awoke to a throbbing toothache and knew it was time…this thing had to go.
I awoke to clear skies, cool temps and the sound of the Gunnison river behind me. I made quick work of coffee, breakfast and packing up camp before heading north to G-town. My first stop in Gunnison was to the car wash to de-mud the chassis, then to find a shop that would let me put my truck on a lift to poke around and see what was what.
The shop I stopped at was really cool about letting me in the back with their tech to try and diagnose this rattle. In the end, the rattle evaded me…but I know whatever it is won’t leave me stranded…the suspension is all tight.
From the shop it was off to find a dentist for an x-ray of my tooth. As suspected, I had an abscess that was not going to disappear with antibiotics…so I decided to just pull it. It’s about $4-5k for a permanent fake tooth, which is a lot of toys one could buy…so I think I’ll just sport the missing tooth as a reminder of my trip
So tonight is my first night in a hotel…which bums me out as I wanted to do the entire trip sans hotels. But given the circumstances of today it made the most sense.
Tomorrow I will rejoin the COBDR and follow it at least another day. I want to do more…in fact I could stay in this part of CO for at least another week. But my family all arrives at the cottage in Ontario next week and I’m still 1,400 miles away if I took the most direct route…and I’d still like to see some WY and SD.
Cheers,
B
