The biggest descission starting out was which route to take to Telluride. We had three options. Our first choice was Ophir Pass, a fun 4WD pass just outside of Silverton connecting to the small mountain town of Ophir. The Ophir community is a beautiful small town up in the mountains between a couple of huge avalanche chutes. It's truly an amazing and picturesque place. The question mark with this route was if we would find snow up on the pass. It's certainly not a pass you want to find snow on.
If the Ophir route was to fail us, our back up plan was to drop back down to Silverton, take Highway 550 north over Red Mountain Pass, which was a bit lower in elevation, and actually maintained in winter conditions. The pass is one of the most beautiful drives in Colorado...though also very scary if you don't like heights and big drop-offs with no guardrails.
Our last resort was to head west out of Durango through Mancos and Dolores. This is a great way to go if you are short on time and don't want to deal with as much snow but certainly not as pretty as the other ways.
Before leaving Rachel's and my apartment, I did one last check of the live road cams online. Red Mountain looked clear so we could at least take that route if Ophir didn't pan out. Getting up to campus, the students all gathered ready for the adventure. We loaded up the vehicles and headed out. All but one of our vehicles drove north. Jennifer and her kids headed towards Dolores. They would meet us in Telluride after taking the shorter route.
Soon, our group arrived in Silverton. We pulled off at the gas station so that we could all regroup, use the restroom, and get snacks for the drive ahead of us. During our time there, the gas station attendant told us that Ophir was a bit slick but that people had made it over safely. Sounded good to me. We at least could give it a try and if we had to turn back, that was perfectly okay also. The road sounded good but a lot can change in short periods of time up there.
As we turned off the highway on Ophir Pass, we could see the clouds starting to settle on the mountains above us.
That was where we were heading. The higher we got, the more snow we started seeing on the side of the road.
We were quickly in the clouds, ourselves, in blowing snow.
Toward the top, the road became fully covered in snow. Still, the traction was really good. We proceeded a bit further to the top of the pass. There, it was time to make a decision. Going up is always the easy part. Gravity makes going down a bit more tricky in the snow.
We had a few minutes to decide as students took pictures and played in the snow at around 11,800 feet above sea-level.
With good traction coming up the pass, I decided to push on. It wouldn't take us long to drop below the snow-level, I thought. Well, we didn't make it far before the conditions drastically changed and quickly took a turn for the worst.
We were actually still pretty much on top. We had driven less than 100 yards when I felt the slightest hint of slippage. With that, I didn't want to take any chances and turned the convoy around.
I think I was more bummed than the students. They were just happy to have been able to play in the snow. As bummed as I was to not make it over the pass, I knew we still had beautiful Telluride to look forward to. It would just take us a little bit longer to get there. We made it back down the pass with no problems.
Then, it was over the scenic Red Mountain Pass turning at Ridgway, driving past Mt. Sneffels, a 14,000 foot peak covered in clouds and snow, all the way to Telluride just as the sun was starting to set. The mountains were blanketed in snow with pink, purple and orange clouds as their backdrop.
Absolutely stunning. The students were in awe of the beauty they saw on the drive. So was I. It never gets old.
Pulling into the parking garage in Mountain Village, students took more pictures and we then made our way to the free gondola. The gondola was a cool experience for the students.
While on the gondola, we got a call from Jennifer saying that she reserved a table of 20 for us at a local restaurant, Brown Dog Pizza. She was just waiting for us to get there. It was a lot of space to save on a Saturday night.
The restaurant was packed when we got there but we were able to go right to our seats thanks to Jennifer. Our waitress did a great job considering that we had 20 people in our group, and for a good number of them, English is not their first language. Dinner turned out to be fantastic.
Great conversations and laughter could be overheard throughout our group all night.
Before we knew it, it was time to head back to Durango. We'd had a great time in Telluride.
We loaded up the vehicles and began our journey back. In the the vehicle Rachel and I were in, the conversations continued from dinner. Most of our trip back, we talked about sin nature and other Biblical truths with our students. It was a fun conversation.
We arrived back safe, sound, and a bit tired late that Saturday night. Overall, it was a great trip where I think a lot of Gospel seeds were planted! Be praying that God would continue grow those seeds in our students!
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