Rock, Rail, and Really Good Wine

The Lord Forgives, Rocks Don't

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Photos taken with a Fuji 1800 by Paul J. Lorona unless otherwise credited.

Engineer Mountain Road

Engineer Mountain Road runs through the higher reaches of the San Juans from just south of Ouray down to Silverton. It starts from highway 550 above Bear Creek Falls and passes through an un-named draw between Denver Hill and Engineer Mountain into the upper reaches of the Animas River valley. A side road takes you up to the summit of Engineer Pass. I've done the road to Engineer Pass with the beast, but it wasn't fun. Long wheel-base trucks have to cut a few times around one or two of the switchbacks, and it can be a bit exciting for passengers (especially small ones), so we passed on that portion of the trip. We had plenty of fun without it.

As the sign says, you need a four wheel drive for this road, and you'll need it within the first five hundred feet, as you're rock crawling practically from the outset. I hadn't driven this road in several years, and it has really deteriorated from how I remembered it. It used to be rocky and rough for the first quarter mile or so, now it's rocky and rough practically the entire distance between the trailhead and the cutoff to Mineral Point.

It''s a good idea to air down your tires when you go rock-crawling. We were reminded of this on the trail...

Believe it!

My father and his Jeep Cherokee, already in four wheel low, crawling up. As you may see, we are literally still a stone's throw from the highway. Image by Adam C. Lorona with his Canon A95.

Still crawling, further up the trail. Image by Adam C. Lorona with his Canon A95.

Pausing for breath in a relatively wide, flat spot. That is the trail just traveled in the foreground. Image by Adam C. Lorona with his Canon A95.

Higher in the canyon above the confluence of Mineral Creek and the Uncompaghre River. It hasn't rained yet, so the vehicles are still looking fairly presentable. The surface elevation here is about 10,150 feet, we are deep in the canyon in what passes for heavily forested terrain in the San Juans. Image by Vicky A. Lorona.

One of the many switchbacks on the Engineer Mountain Road. This one was fairly easy, I only had to take one cut at it with the beast, my father's Jeep Cherokee sailed through it no trouble at all. Image by Adam C. Lorona with his Canon A95.

The Lord Forgives, Rocks Don't. The right front tire on my father's Jeep caught a very sharp rock (as you may have been noticing, the trail is riddled with them). We are not too far below the Mineral Point cutoff, and a thunderstorm is threatening. Adam and I managed to get to the spare and tools, jack the wheel up on very wet, unstable, and uneven terrain, swap tires, and reload everything in just under thirty minutes. Not bad for an old coyote and his young son. Image by Gloria I. Lorona using Adam's Canon A95.

This one's a write-off. Amazingly, the next day my father was able to find a slightly used exact replacement in the city of Montrose for $35 mounted, balanced, and installed. The replacement was so new it still had the little rubber needle protrusions on it, I guessed it had less than a hundred miles on it. Image taken by Adam using his Canon A95.

The old guy huffin' back up the trail to where my Fox waits with the beast, after getting my folks under way again. Image by Vicky A. Lorona.

This weather that day threatened us off and on most of the time we were in the high country. This is near Denver Lake, looking south into the upper reaches of the Animas River Canyon far in the distance. This is the low saddle where we pass from Mineral Creek drainage to Animas River drainage. Image by Vicky A. Lorona.

What young pups do for fun, even at 12,000 feet! Anytime is a good time for a race, I guess... Image by Vicky A. Lorona.

We stopped to gather our thoughts and soak up the high country ambiance at Denver Lake, almost exactly 12,000 feet above sea level. Everyone is in this picture except the photographer, Adam took the image with his Canon A95.

On the shoulder of Houghton Mountain, just below Denver Lake in the far upper reaches of the North Fork of the Animas River, we found a couple of friends hanging out on the side of the trail. These are Marmots, I believe they are of the "Yellow-bellied" variety, although truth be known I'm not that much of an expert. Adam took this with his Canon A95.

From the trail descending into Animas Forks we look west up California Gulch towards the headwaters of the West Fork of the Animas River. Placer Gulch leads off to the left at the foot of California Mountain, Hurricane Peak is in the background at 13,447 feet. The Frisco Mill is prominent in the middle background.

The Frisco Mill was built in the 1890s, all the lumber was milled down in Durango and hauled up as far as the rails of the Denver & Rio Grande and the Silverton Northern could carry it, then by mule to the site at approximately 11,500 feet. Image by Adam with his Canon A95.

Looking inside one sees that the entire structure at the Frisco Mill was assembled by the numbers on-site! Each timber was carefully marked so that it all went together like a monstrous puzzle. The Frisco sits at the mouth of the Bagley Tunnel. It appears the Bagley is being worked, as several of the smaller structures in the area were in good repair and a recent looking pickup truck was parked near one of them.

Draw! Grandpa hamming it up a bit for Adam at the site of the Frisco Mill, again with Adam's Canon A95.

The site of Animas Forks, dominated by the ruins of the Gold Prince Mill in the foreground. The size of the vehicles in the image will help give you an idea of the scale involved. The mill had one hundred stamps in it and could process five hundred tons of ore a day. This was the largest concentrating mill in the state of Colorado in it's day, and cost an estimated half million dollars to build in the early 1900s. It was in operation until 1910. In 1917 the stamps of the Gold Prince Mill were moved down canyon to Eureka.
Above the right side of the mill foundations is the famed "Walsh House". Built around 1894 by Thomas Walsh, of Camp Bird Mine fame, it was and continues to be one of the most substantial structures in the basin, and the only one with a bay window. Mr. Walsh sold his interests in the Camp Bird mine for an unheard of 5.2 million dollars in 1902 and spent the rest of his life living high in Washington DC, where he died in 1910.
The town of Animas Forks, estrablished in 1877, lasted until shortly after the dismantling of the Gold prince Mill. By 1920 it was all but deserted.

Looking southeast down canyon below Animas Forks. The main road continues to descend into the canyon. To the right begins the road into Picayune Gulch, which will climb up between Eureka and Treasure Mountains and eventually drop into Placer Gulch, making a big loop back into Animas Forks from California Gulch. The road to the left climbs up Burns Gulch, Niagara Peak is the further of the two visible and is 13,807 feet high. Image by Vicky A. Lorona.

The remains of the Sunnyside Mills on the west wall of the Animas River canyon in the ghost town of Eureka, above Silverton. The wooden foundation of the first Sunnyside Mill, built in 1898, can be seen to the left of the concrete foundations. The second mill was built using stamps and other equipment taken from the Gold Prince Mill up canyon in Animas Forks in 1917. These mills served mines high above the town of Eureka, to the northwest in Sunnyside Basin, up at 12,500 feet. Ore was trammed to the mill from above, mostly from the Sunnyside Mine itself. Other mines in the area included the Mastodon, Toltec, Tom Moore, Golden Fleece, Silver Wing, Lion Tunnel, and the oldest of them all, the Little Giant. The last Sunnyside Mill was shut down in 1941 and sold for scrap and dismantled in 1948. Eureka died shortly thereafter.

Late in the afternoon the gloom of threatening thunderstorms hangs over the city of Silverton and it's San Juan County Courthouse. Built in 1907, it still serves the community of Silverton today. View looks southwest, Grand Turk dominates the skyline to the left of the clock and bell tower. Image by Vicky A. Lorona.

This was perhaps our longest trip in terms of time on the trail, and in some ways our most educational as well. Yet in spite of all the rock-crawling fun, the most challenging and inspiring trail was yet to come.

Our next trip took us up to Corkscrew Pass.