Yankee Boy and Imogene Passes

The morning dawned bright and beautiful but there is still the possibly of rain, AGAIN!

We departed an hour later than usual and headed up Yankee Boy Pass which goes south and west of Ouray. It is an medium difficulty road so we had some challenges, some narrow places and some steep parts but that was what we came out here to do. Unfortunately, we had to turn around before reaching the top due to a snow covered road. Five Jeeps went up to the snow line to see if it was really as bad as reported and it was pretty slick. One Jeep really struggled to get turned around and back down.

So we retraced our steps to the turn off for Imogene Pass which would have dropped us off in Telluride. Again, we had to turn around due to a snow covered road. Three motorcyclists coming down from above us reported that the road was wet but we could manage it in the Jeeps except that once we reached the pass at the top, there was new snow with no tracks going down the other side. Regardless of the conditions at the top, the bottom part of Imogene held some good rock climbing, dips into ditches and some challengingly steep drop offs.

I took a picture of what we could have driven. I guess next time we come to Ouray, we will need to arrive earlier than the end of Sept.

Chatter on the CB radios centered around beer so the lot of us stopped at the Ouray Brewery Co. and had a rip roaring good time! One lady asked me if I could have more fun -- can you imagine that?!? We topped off the evening by sitting around a warm fire with quiet conversation.