A town in Colorado that made me feel that I was in the Swiss Alps!!!

Telluride Colorado, is a small, kinda hippy town with huge mountains surrounding it. These mountains are so serene, and ginormous!!! I never heard of this town until I was searching “best hiking in Colorado.” Of coarse the regulars pop up such as Rocky Mountain National Park, and Mesa Verde National Park, but Telluride stood out for me. This town has a lot to offer. It’s definitely a ski town during the winter with villas all over and gondolas soaring up these towering peaks, but as for the summer, hiking or even just looking up at these mountains is just majestic. 

The first night I was there, I noticed people going up this gondola.

“I have to check this out!”

Errrrrrrrr      Pulled in the parking lot as fast as I could. Pulled out money, which I hate paying for stuff while traveling so that says something, and ran right over to the person operating the Gondola. Before I even asked how much it was he opened the door right up for me! Its FREE!!!!

So if you have ever been on a gondola ride before, you know how at the station it goes really slow, but as soon as that gondola hits the slope, you are on your way, fast! So up, up and up this gondola went and it had soaring views of the landscape. I have to say, it was an epic ride!

So the gondola ride was over and I was like, “awe, over already?” Nope!  You can hope off and take another ride higher, a second gondola. So of coarse I did that, who wouldn’t. The views were crazy of coarse and then you had an option to take a third one. Now this one brought you down the mountain. The first two brought you up and over and the third one down the mountain. That was scary! It just flew almost straight down this mountain. I never experienced anything like it before. It was fast, and it was fun! So these gondolas run all year round. It connects two towns together. Telluride and Mountain Village. I was riding a gondola with this one bike rider and he stated that this was his commute. Can you imagine having gondola rides over sky scrapping mountains being your commute to work. Come on Now!

Hiking

 I just did one peak. I did research on the best hikes to do in Telluride. A few came up and I google imaged all of them and fell in love with Ajax peak the most. You can literally see the switchbacks up this mountain from all the way in town.

When you park in the parking lot, there are no signs indicating that you are in the right place. It is really easy to get there though. All you do is drive into town and just stay on the main drag, and literally follow the road until it ends at this parking lot. The end of it will be a dirt road.  You just drive toward the monstrous peaks. You cant miss them ;).  When you approach the parking lot, you will see two trail heads with neither of them marked regarding hiking of Ajax peak. The one straight ahead looking at the mountain is private property. Don’t take that one. Its a mining town and I guess it’s dangerous. You will see a dirt road on the left and this dirt road will bring you right up these switchbacks.

This is the path you take, and this is where you make your decision to hike from here, or drive up it.You can drive up it, but you may need a Jeep, Truck, SUV, or just a bad ass driver behind the wheel of a car.  🙂   There are a couple pull offs so if you feel uncomfortable, you can pull off a third, half way up it, or keep going. Anyway, I did not know any of this before the hike, so I was standing at the trail-head looking like an idiot because I had no idea what to do. So I was going to wait for the next person to drive up to ask him/her where the trail head was. So this guy gets out of his car, and I ask him where to go. He proceeds to say…

“Well I was about to ask you the same thing.”

Great! So were both out of town, and both can’t find the trail head. It was kinda cool though. An instant connection in that regard. So we both packed our packs and we’re going to wing it, hoping that this dirt road leads to Ajax peak. Thank God it did, or who knows where we were heading!

This hike overlooks Telluride during the first part of the hike, which is a continuation of switchbacks up a steep mountain. There is also a few waterfalls you will come across. Beautiful!

If you go all the way up, it will end at this house (someone lives up there?!?). But, you can keep going, which of coarse my spontaneous hiking partner and I did. We did not see any other hikers go past this point, but we were also hiking this peak in the beginning of June, which is not the greatest idea!!!! So we keep going and the snow is starting to really take over the mountain.

My feet are going through the snow, left and right, over and over again, but I did not feel in danger so I kept going. Then I fell to my hips and got lodged in there so bad that I had to dig myself out, and with the help of my hiking partner.

It took two of us. I was stuck pretty bad. Whoops! I was stuck in the snow for about 5 minutes, which is very long when you can’t get out of one place. I was beginning to feel like I was about to start to panic. But then I got out 🙂   And we kept going of coarse.

“The peaks got to be close,” I kept saying.

Just a little farther. Nope! The trail kept getting worse and the path just kept on going. Finally we assessed our situation and decided to turn back. We did not reach the peak, but hey, were alive, and if we kept going, who knows what would have happened. I am proud that we decided to turn back. He actually left the decision up to me and I made the decision to turn around. It was a smart decision. As much as we wanted to see the peak, it wasn’t worth our lives, or even a broken bone. Who knows how far we could have fallen if we kept going up. It could have been 27 hours mountain style and I did not want that to happen. Regardless, we still got amazing shots of the landscape and the hike was just all-around AWESOME!

So we went down and this time went off-roading and ended up at an abondoned mine site. It was pretty cool.

Free Camping

So thanks to the hiking partner I had, he told me about this amazing site that I did not know existed.

https://freecampsites.net/

All you do is simply put in where you are, and this site will tell you where you can camp nearby for free! Say What!!!!  I had no idea this existed. I was staying in apartment complex’s and Walmarts and this existed the whole time. It worked! I stayed at Alta Lakes. You can get there just right outside of town. Go south of Telluride on the 145 (main highway that brings you in and out of Telluride).  Pass Mountain Village and it’s about a 10 minute drive after that. The road you turn on is called 623 and there is a sign saying Alta Lakes. It is a left hand turn when you are driving south and it is a dirt road so you have to keep your eyes peeled. There are pull offs all along the road. No reservations. First come, first serve kind of thing.

Countryside

You don’t even have to do any hiking to see these amazing views! Just driving on the main road alone on the 145 is spectacular enough. You see wildlife, (I saw deer and elk), spectacular views, and get to drive into the small town of Telluride. The people are really relaxed there and it just seems to be a very small, quiet, yet happy little town. The gas is a little expensive but not too bad. Just about 25 cents more than the average. Hope you enjoyed this article and learned something new about what the state of Colorado has to offer.