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Sun |
Great Sand Dunes to Black Canyon of the Gunnison NP Camp at NP |
Large hot rod run in Alamosa. Beautiful rods all over the place, Happy Days are here again! This drive went through a couple of mountain passes and Minnie did just fine. Her first real performance challenge on all 10 cylinders. Arrived near evening. A quick bike ride to the visitor center for planning and then drove the rim drive to search out the sunset point. Tried to catch sunset but the sunset point has a bad angle on the canyon. I also find out I can’t drive Minnie to the bottom on the only mining road to the bottom due to length restrictions. The canyon walls are very dark gray, almost black, hence the name of the place. The Gunnison river is at the bottom and did all the carving of this gorge. The campsites are deserted and the area is eerily silent, no wind, no animals, no crickets, no people. I love the off season. The stars are not as bright as Sand Dunes. There are no night sounds (crickets or otherwise) of any type. Very eerie. |
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Mon |
Camp at NP |
Rim drive and some photos in the morning. I pack my real backpack with camera stuff and fishing gear for hike to bottom. Have to sign in and they limit the number of folks headed down to 20 a day. Took myself and my 30lbs pack on down the side of the canyon via a drainage ditch. It is a route not a trail so it is no marked. It is also scree all the way down. Scree is what erosion vomits off the face of a mountain – gravel, rocks, and boulders all thrown together like a spillway cascading down the side. Very hard to walk on especially at the angle of it here. Previous hikers built Blair Witch type rock stacks indicating the direction to go (called cairns) but they were far between and hard to find/follow. It is a 1,800-foot drop within a mile hike so the grade is 35% or so (that’s about a 40-degree slope). Spent most of the time (down and up) crouched over in 4x4 mode (feet and hands) as the angle is so great there is no way to balance and the scree so loose there is little to get way traction. It is splendid in the canyon, very narrow, maybe a couple hundred feet at most. The Gunnison yielded one small Rainbow and that’s all I needed on this Colorado Gold Medal river segment. Got some interesting pictures and relaxed for the hike/climb back. Each way took a little under 2 grueling hours. I had to smile at accomplishing this tough hike. Got back to Minnie at sundown downed the Tylenol PMs and hit the hay. |