Mount Sneffels, Ouray, CO
- laurenlcoon
- Sep 30, 2016
- 4 min read
Back to Colorado we go! Someday we hope to live out there but for now, a couple visits a year will suffice.
I planned the trip for Brandon's birthday and packed a lot in which isn't unusual. We left the ATL airport around 4:20pm on Friday and landed in Denver around 5:30pm. We stopped at National Car Rental before hitting the road and picked up a Jeep Cherokee. (this was a good choice for the mountain)
We stayed at Hotel Nativ in Union Station area of Denver. The location was great and the hotel was so cute, they even had a bit of nightlife in the bottom!
We immediately changed and headed out to Little Five area to go to dinner at Work & Class. We had to put our name on a list so we headed across the street to grab drinks at Los Chingones.. try their Smoked Pina-Rita!
We love the food at Work & Class because its southern and southwest mixed and SO delicious. (Also GF friendly! )
We got up the next morning around 7, grabbed coffee in the hotel and grabbed a quick breakfast at SNOOZE. This was a quick walk over from our hotel and on the way back to our car, we stumbled on a farmers market.
Behold... GF Pasta Galore!
We then hit the road to Colorado Springs to meet up with our friends and check out the Garden of the Gods! The drive was a little under 2 hours and the views were beautiful, it was a nice stop to break up the long drive to Ouray, CO. We got out and walked around some of the paths for a little over an hour. We had moccasins and flips flops on and 1 bottle of water, so the paths are not strenuous at all.
Once we realized how much time had passed, we jumped in the car and drive south for the next 5 hours to Ouray!
The temps were so low and wonderful in the mornings and in the high 70's during the day so it was a nice break from the hot Georgia weather.
We got to our bed and breakfast a little before 7pm and it was AdOrAbLE! We stayed at the China Clipper Inn B&B. There aren't too many hotels in Ouray and this was one of the nicer places we could find online. There were some cute hotels downtown when we walked around but we loved the Bed & Breakfast experience.
That evening we went to Brickhouse for dinner before calling it a night. The town of Ouray is adorable but very sleepy and quiet and everything closes by 8 or 9pm!
The next morning, we got up entirely too early to set out for our hike! We set
our alarms for 4am and were dressed and out the door by 4:45... we wanted to get to the base of the trek by 5am. The drive was not far from where we were staying, however, the roads were really bad. We passed 2 men stuck and after trying to help them, realized they should just ride with us to the base and try to get their car when they got back in the daylight. The 4 of us made it to the base where about 10 others were and started our hike.
It was beautiful watching the sunrise and seeing the moon during the beginning hours of our hike. We saw about 5-7 other people on our hike up the first few miles. There are various paths you can take to the top and the route we went didn't seem to be too popular, which we love.
After we hit 13,000 feet up, I started to get a bad headache. We stopped and had some of our snacks and drank water thinking this would help what I attributed to low blood sugar. Once we were about 13,800 I realized that my problem was not low blood sugar, but probably altitude sickness. We were so close to the top and even though I felt pretty terrible, we decided that we had to at least get to 14K feet before turning back.
YAY we did it! We got to about 14,070 feet so about 100 feet shy of the summit. Unfortunately a boulder had fallen at the top and there was a very dangerous opening, with a lot of scree and exposure that didn't seem safe, not only for myself who wasn't feeling well... but for a lot of the hikers at the top. Several people turned around and we felt that was safe for us as well.
The way down was not very fun. At this point I was pretty sick and had to stop every hundred feet or so to hydrate and rest. Brandon was a trooper and carried my things once we got past the steep inclines.
We made it back to the bottom and got in the car to head back to our B&B and nap off this altitude hangover.
First stop after our nap was an oxygen bar. Not sure if this is a gimmick or not but it couldn't hurt. I was still not feeling great after descending and sleeping so I was up for anything. We then drove to Telluride to have dinner and since I hadn't really eaten much all day, I wanted pizza, of course!
We found a place that had Gluten free pizza and I was in heaven. Brown Dog Pizza was the place and it was good. Packed for a football game and tons of locals so we enjoyed people watching and stuffing our faces!
The next day, we loaded up the car, ate breakfast at our little B&B and hit the road back to the airport to head home. It was a fun trip and next time we will definitely add another day prior to a hike to make sure we are acclimated.
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