I was dying to get into some real mountains, and I had the afternoon off so I just went for a quick drive.
I read in my Colorado Backcountry Adventure book that they clear the snow off of the Silverton side of Ophir pass. After reading this last summer, I decided I wanted to get up there in the spring. Yesterday I had some time, so I decided to go. It was the end of April, 4/28/15.
The bad news was that it had snowed in the past week so I couldn't take my Jeep to the top. The good news was that I could drive until 1.25 miles from the top. I decided to hike the rest of the way. It was a gorgeous day and I was comfortable hiking in just my t-shirt. Too bad I didn't wear my boots, though, because my shoes were soaking wet by the time I got back to my Jeep. I was hiking in 1-4 inches of soggy snow most of the way, and the last 0.25 miles was in 6-12 inches of snow.
This was a fun trip to see the mountains in the snow and to see the huge walls of snow at the top where they had to bulldoze the snow off the road. I'm glad I went!
I drive slow (the speed limit) and so people always line up behind me. On the Million Dollar Highway, people often drive 20 mph over the speed limit. Since I'm a nice guy I pulled over to let them pass. I always saw this little observation platform that hangs over the cliff, and since I was stopped I decided to get out and look. Wow, I never realized I drove over this waterfall! It was neat to see it going under the snow too.
By the way, this waterfall is about 2.5 miles past Ouray on the way toward Silverton. It is 0.2 miles after the short tunnel.
These walls were around 10 feet high. This is taken about 50 yards from the sign at the top.
The top, just a mere 11,789 ft. It's not even over 12,000 ft, sheesh...
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