February 24, 2008, Red Mt. Pass, CO

Since 2002, I€™ve saved tour information about Red Mountain Pass, CO just in case.  With a storm cycle approaching the San Juan Mountains, we planned to tour for a few hours before the storm arrived.  Well, the storm arrived a bit early but we still were able to tour at Red Mt. Pass.  Just south of Ouray as the road began ascending, the drizzle changed to snow and we put the chains on the van.  Highway 550 is a beautiful serpentine mountain road with few guardrails and in a snow storm it felt comforting to be driving with chains. We just love driving to 11,020€™ to start touring. We arrived at the casual hour of 10:30 and enjoyed watching a couple of young traibreakers lead the way. Visibility was limited but it was easy following the trail which was on a county road. Our route passed St. Paul€™s lodge which offers lodging, meals,€¦ plus a separate hut.  We climbed to about 12,000 where the trees began disappearing, the winds increased and visibility diminished.  Our original plan was to tour to McMillan Peak at 12,804€™ but the weather just was not cooperating. From McMillan Peak, you can also descend easterly down to Silverton Mountain Ski area and leave a vehicle for the shuttle back to Red Mt. Pass (6 miles back to Silverton and 8 miles back to the pass). The skiing was heavier powder than we had experienced in Utah (we are spoiled) and through gladed terrain.  The terrain we could see looked wonderful, but you definitely need strong trail breakers with all the deep powder.  After Red Mt, we descended to Silverton which seemed very quiet for a Sunday. We then crossed two more 10,000 plus passes (Molas and Coalbank) and noticed more ski touring tracks which caught our interest for future touring.  With another 8€ forecast overnight and increasing avy danger, we plan to ride the lifts at Purgatory with some free passes. The snow pack in CO is excellent this year.