Friday, August 19, 2011

Wolf Creek Pass Revisited

We finally got to do some sightseeing yesterday. First, we got the oil changed in the pickup, then ate lunch (because it was too late for breakfast by then) at Tequilas, a Mexican restaurant with an outdoor eating balcony overlooking the San Juan River and the hot springs resort. I had the seafood fajita for my shrimp fix. Excellent! Click this photo to view more Pagosa Springs photos.


Then we headed for Wolf Creek Pass. We stopped by to view Treasure Falls on the way as it’s located right along the side Hwy 160 at the base of the start over the pass. Unfortunately, it was overcast and the trail up to the Falls was closed.

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I got more photos of Wolf Creek Pass going UP this time. We crossed the Continental Divide and arrived at the Wolf Creek Ski Lodge. Driving past it to the east, we made our way to the Alberta Park Reservoir. Nice little lake with several fishermen in boats and canoes, and a lady painting a picture of the area.

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Finally, we started back down Wolf Creek Pass — this time with my camera battery fully charged. We decided to take a little off-roading adventure onto a forest road. Glad we had 4-wheel drive. We saw an amazing number of wild flowers. And the temperature dropped to a very windy 62ยบ while up on the side of that mountain!

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We got a chance this time to stop at the lookout toward the bottom of the Pass. Wow, the rock formations were like something from another world. And the view of the valley below was breathtaking.




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Since Jeff had so much fun on the forest road, we took another one which went along the bottom of the Pass. We passed an RV park and a National Forest Park, and stopped at the Westfork of the San Juan River.




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By this time, it’s late afternoon and we’re both getting thirsty and overwhelmed with all the sights. However. . .we came to ANOTHER forest road, to another Forest campground, and just had to check it out. It was also the road to Silver Falls. Yeah!

We drove around the campground and spied a Spirit Casita tucked back in a private little spot — but Rob & Linda weren’t home. We continued on the extremely bumpy road thru a very narrow canyon, right next to a rushing stream. . .

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that eventually opened up into a gorgeous valley. We passed free campsites along the rushing stream and saw a few people fishing in the stream.

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It was an 8 mile drive back to Silver Falls, eventually going onto private land. Saw a herd of white-faced Angus cows and a doe with a 4-point buck crossing the road. We finally arrived at the parking area for Silver Falls tho.


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I took this photo as we exited to path to the Falls.

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There wasn’t any directions so we had to guess how to get to Silver Falls, but we knew we found the path when we started hearing the sound of falling water. It was a nice steep climb in places, but we finally got to WATER.

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But the main Falls was UP, UP, & more UP the path. We were hanging onto trees to get up parts of it because the gravel didn’t make good footing.


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Finally, we got to the main falls.


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Well that little hike sure did us in — and now we were even MORE thirsty. Thankfully that lunch at Tequilas lasted us all day long, and we had a fabulous good time. Here’s a view toward Wolf Creek Pass as we neared Hwy 160 on our way out. You can click on almost all these photos to go to the Picasa album with more photos.

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I changed the name of the Picasa album with my cell fon photos of Wolf Creek Pass to Wolf Creek Pass by fon. All the rest of the photos of the Pass are in the Wolf Creek Pass area album. I've posted more photos from around the camp in the Pagosa Riverside Campground album too.

3 comments:

  1. Lovely, lovely! Great to see you two enjoying yourselves!

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  2. Beautiful!! Your pictures are awesome!! What kind of camera are you using?

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  3. I have fond memories of Wolf Creek Pass. We would go over it to go to Purgatory to ski in the winter. One year the car broke down and we spent Christmas Eve in a bar waiting for the tow truck. Looks like it is a bewutiful site in the summer.

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