The San Juans Will Break Your Heart

Colorado Trail Days 29 & 30 – Cataract Lake to Elk Park Spur

Like many long-distance hikers, I’ve enjoyed backpacking through many diverse mountain ranges. The Canadian Rockies are my first love, and the North Cascades are my regular boo. I deeply love and regularly long for the Sierras, and hold the Southern Alps of New Zealand dearly. The Presidential Range of New Hampshire is good for a one night stand and the high peaks of Southern California are just, well, a bit intimidating.

The San Juans captured my heart through their stark beauty. Spending miles and miles above tree line meant epic views at every turn, while also facing increased exposure to the elements and high altitude “diet air”.

Camping above tree line also meant chilly nights waking up to frost on our tents. What’s worse than putting away a wet tent? Putting away a cold, frosty, wet tent!

The route through the San Juans stays as true to the Continental Divide as possible, hugging the sides of peaks, going through passes, and over the shoulder of ridges. Each and every high point brought amazing views of soaring peaks and deep valleys.

The variety of colours really stunned me. There were rocks of red and orange, grayish-blue, purple and even green tones. We took a late morning break on a 13,000 foot ridge line and realised we were surrounded by crystal fragments!

Our next break was at a beautiful creek flowing out just below another high peak. I looked it up on my map and realised we were enjoying a drink from the headwaters of the Rio Grande. An auspicious beginning for such a storied river!

Early afternoon we crossed into the Weminuche Wilderness, the largest Wilderness area in Colorado. Unbelievably the landscape got even more majestic, with beautifully striated rock walls.

After dipping through a valley we reached a high plateau where we had views of the soaring Needle Mountains. Can the word “Wow” be overused?

At the end of the plateau we reached an important junction, the splitting point of the Continental Divide Trail and the Colorado Trail. As much as I was drawn to continue southbound through more of the San Juans, it was time to turn west to complete the last 90 miles through to Durango.

It was also time to go downhill. The very last mile of our epic day was a series of very tight and narrow switchbacks dropping us steeply off the plateau. I don’t usually have problems with heights, but this one was a bit of a doozy! It probably didn’t help that I wanted to keep looking out at the gorgeous scenery when I really needed to concentrate on my footing.

Our campsite for the night was also one of the more epic ones. We were at the edge of a narrow hanging valley, set up next to an old collapsed miner’s shed, still above tree line and looking across at a waterfall coming off the high cliffs above, and back towards the crazy switchbacks. It was pretty exposed but thankfully the thunderstorms in the area stayed on the other side of the peaks!

The next morning we had a sometimes steep 3000 foot descent through the narrow valley. We took our time though as we only had to travel 7 miles.

At the bottom of the valley we took a short spur trail to a rather unique trailhead – a train stop in the middle of the forest! A historic train runs between the towns of Durango and Silverton and makes a couple stops in the wilderness for hiking access. We were catching the train northbound to Silverton, about 30 minutes away.

It was the end of the Labor Day weekend and there were lots of folks waiting for the train. It was quite wild to see it roll up and stop for us. The train cars are all vintage models and we got to sit in an open-air car with long benches facing outwards.

The handful of days and dozens of miles in the central San Juans absolutely thrilled me and to cap it all off with a historic train ride to town made for a truly unique Colorado Trail experience.