Colorado Wheeling around Ouray

freedom_in_4low

I'm a rooster illusion
Supporting Member
Ride of the Month Winner
Joined
Sep 26, 2019
Messages
8,464
Location
Arcadia, OK
I'm headed that way on Saturday with an eclectic group. Trying to plan out our route. We're camping Saturday night at deer lakes outside of Lake city, Sunday night alta lakes between Ophir and telluride, and then Monday night near Rio grand reservoir.

Looking for some input as to whether one of these routes should take significantly longer than the other, or if they're about the same, is the majority of mineral creek traffic going east or west?
 
The FunTreks book describes Mineral Creek from west to east, but it doesn't mention anything about one-way traffic.

Alta Lakes was a quick, easy trail. We only went up there for the day, but it looks like a great spot to camp. Photos from October 2019:

IMG_1832.jpeg
IMG_1833.JPG
IMG_1847.jpeg
 
The FunTreks book describes Mineral Creek from west to east, but it doesn't mention anything about one-way traffic.

Alta Lakes was a quick, easy trail. We only went up there for the day, but it looks like a great spot to camp. Photos from October 2019:

View attachment 184883View attachment 184888View attachment 184884

yeah, it's definitely not one way, it's just that a lot of those trails seem to have more traffic going one way than the other due to the way they can be looped together, and on one as narrow and shelfy as that one I'd rather be going with most of the traffic than against it - especially in a group of 6 rigs. The fact that funtreks and trailsoffroad both describe going west to east, that's probably a fair indicator of how most people run it so we might be better off doing California/Corkscrew east to west and Mineral Creek coming back the next day.

Great photos. I haven't been to alta lakes yet but having seen some pictures I wanted to get it in as one of our campsites.