A VERY interesting day!

We left in the morning with Silverton as our goal, but wanted to do a hike on the way.  Jan had read about it in the same hiking book.  Sounded good, about 1 1/4 mile one way, climbing about 450 feet, starting at 9400' going to Potato Lake, or Spud Lake as it is referred to here.  It was about 3.5 miles down a dirt road, a little rocky, but nice.  The beginning of the hike was near a beautiful lily pond way up in the mountains north of Durango.

It was a fantastic hike, nice trail, easy steady climb, excellent views, gorgeous aspen groves passing by a series of beaver ponds.

Trail

Aspen groves

Not bad views

Beaver ponds

Until we popped out at Spud Lake.  Beautiful lake!  Peaceful, pristine clear water surrounded by towering mountains.  It was worth it.  On the way we were talking about another hike we had taken a couple years ago to Opal Lake.  It was touted as a nice easy hike to an absolutely picturesque lake.  When we got there expecting this gorgeous lake, it was overgrown, covered with nasty looking algae, unapproachable because of all the vegetation around as if you'd want to approach it.  We were worried that when we arrived at "Spud" lake we'd have a repeat.  Not so, take a look!

Beautiful, huh?  We putzed around the lake a bit, then headed back to the Jeep.  The map showed our road continued around, got a little narrower and rougher, and met back up with Rte 550, the road to Silverton.  We figured why not?
Well, we found out why not in several bumpy, rocky miles.  Our hiking book mentioned the road went down fairly steeply to the creek, but we didn't think much about it.  But as we climbed and climbed I started to get this little niggly feeling in the back of my head.  I told myself I was worrying about nothing.  To back up just a bit, as most of you know, I'm afraid of heights!  I'm getting better with it, but hanging on a cliff edge with nothing next to you scares me to death!  Keep that in mind.  We start to descend a bit, but we are surrounded by aspens, and then come around a bend and we see what looks like stone guard rails with NOTHING out past them.  The road is as wide as we are at this point.  I almost turn around just looking at this road disappearing around the corner, but figure how bad could it be?

Well, I'll tell you how it bad it can be.  It turned out to be the scariest road we have ever been on.  And Jan agrees.  She is not afraid of heights so she wasn't as terrified as I was, but she agreed it was dicey, a shelf road as wide as we were.  I didn't want to think what we would do if we met a vehicle, so I tried to put that out of my mind.  It wasn't that hard to do, as all I could hear was my heart beating at about 500 beats per minute, a roaring in my ears over the vibration of my hands and arms shaking like leaves.  The real problem was, TURNING AROUND WAS NOT AN OPTION. No room!  Oh every once in awhile there was some miniscule widening of the path, I mean road, but there was NO way I was going any closer to the cliff edge.

Nothing on the right

A rock to add challenge

Thankful for these guard rails in the awful places

We continue, my breathing is okay, only about 100 breaths a second, until we see a truck "parked" in the road ahead. OMG!  We ease up to it.  It appears to be hanging over the edge on the right leaving just enough room of the left side, thank God, for us to squeeze through.  3 young men are there with an ATV pulled in front of the truck somehow.  They are real nice, polite kids that I can almost see through the red haze in my vision.  They real quietly say, "Sir, up ahead is a boulder that has fallen into the road, but you should be able to get around it"!  SAY WHAT!  "Do I have to go right towards the cliff edge to get around it?", I ask.  "Yes sir, you do, but you should be able to make it."
Now I really start breathing fast, blood pressure a million over a million.  "But Sir, there is no way you'd be able to turn around anyway", they say to comfort me.
On we go about a quarter of a mile and guess what we see?  A rock in the middle of the road as promised, and even though in this next picture it looks like a piece of cake, there is nothing on the right side behind the rock you see on the right.  It is a little blurry cause Jan took the picture through the windshield and I was probably shaking the Jeep.

Panic

I am sitting there trying my best to figure out what to do, because actually, it doesn't even look like the Jeep will fit between the rocks.  Jan got out and directed me through. As long as I kept my eyes on her I was merely terrified rather than incapacitated.  She told me later there was only about 2-3 inches of road to the right of the tires then nothing.  I'm glad she waited to tell me.  Obviously we survived, the road kept coming down and got a little less scary as we proceeded, and thankfully we never met a car!  I really don't know what you would do.

Pretty view though

We finally got out to 550 and decided it was too late to go to Silverton, so instead we stopped for a bit at Molas Pass, 10,900'.  It was cool and crisp, and beautiful.

Then we went out to Little Molas Lake to walk around a bit, so I could work the seat cover out of my butt.

Little Molas Lake

We decided to call it a day and headed back down towards Durango.  Smoke still around, but not as bad as it had been.  The fire we mentioned to the west of us that was causing all the smoke is 15% contained, but has grown to over 8300 acres now.
We mentioned Haviland Lake as being a favorite of Brett and Sandra's in a previous post and realized we never gave it justice with a picture.  Here you go guys!  It is a gorgeous place.

Haviland Lake