Off-Road over Imogene Pass

We got started a little later in the morning than we'd have liked. We stayed at a Super 8 down the road from Ouray (north) the night before. We found the trail with no problems at all on the other side of Ouray and began our trip at around 10 or 11 in the morning. We stopped pretty soon after we started to eat a little breakfast before driving up the county road that leads to the real trail. Then we hit the road (more like a trail) on our way up to Imogene Pass and then on to Telluride.

The county road isn't in the shape that you'd expect a county road to be in. It's more of a trail, but cars and 2-wheel drive vehicles can make it all the way to the end with no problem. Once the county road ends and the off-road trails begin, though, you see in a hurry why you need four-wheel drive and higher clearance. This is one of the first interesting sights you see on your way up the trail.

I asked Amy to run up ahead and take this cool photo. It gives you some perspective on how small the Blazer looks compared to some of the features on the trail.

This is an old abandoned mine further up the trail. It is pretty cool to get out and walk around and try to imagine what life was like when it was operational. There's a ghost town with part of a mine further yet up the trail. There you can walk into some of the buildings and even look into a horizontal mine shaft that they barred up to keep people out.

This photo does a poor job of showing it, but our red Blazer is in about 4 inches of water here. I got my feet a little wet getting this pic, but it was worth it. The weather is sunny and cool, the Blazer's behaving very well (haven't even needed four-wheel drive low gear yet).

This is the final part of the trail that we must follow to get over Imogene Pass. Imogene Pass is way up on the right, behind part of the mountain. You can see the steady grade that the trail has from this photo. About 1/3 of the way in from the left of the picture is a rather large washout gulley maybe two feet wide and a foot and a half deep, crossing the trail at a diagonal angle. This was the single-most difficult obstacle in the trail that we absolutely had to cross to make it all the way up the mountain. Other areas had much more difficult obstacles in places, but by wise planning and skillful driving, there were less-difficult routes to choose to scale the mountain. We're to a point now (where we are taking this photo from) that it is absolutely necessary to have your vehicle in four-low.

As we looked back down the trail, it didn't look all that difficult. But it severely taxed our stock Chevy Blazer and our nerves!

Another look at the area we stopped at.

Here's our proof that the Blazer made it up the trail to Imogene Pass. Not record time or anything, but for a stock Blazer, I was pretty impressed.

The way down the mountain was much easier, even though it began to sleet and rain later. Here we approach Campbird mine, an old deserted mine and ghost town. This is a rather large ghost town and is very fun to poke around in. Again, thinking of the history of this area is very fun while you're up here.

Here's Telluride, seen through the sleet and rain. It had just about let up at this point, but all the wooden bridges we travelled on had a layer of slush on them. Back when my parents used to rent a Jeep to take on these trails, we always went from Telluride to Ouray. Taking Ouray to Telluride is much more challenging and much more fun. All of the steep rocky slopes we struggled to cross on our way up the mountain were much more difficult to navigate going that way. Going down that side of the mountain from Imogene Pass would be way too easy. At least that's my .02 worth. Hope you enjoyed our photos!

Back to Main Page