OK, time to leave the desert and get into the mountains. The San Juan range of the Rockies juts quite abruptly out of the Colorado Plateau region in southwestern Colorado. It is arguable the largest single range in the Colorado Rockies and overall I consider it to be the most varied and most scenic since many areas have far more jagged peaks and rugged landscapes than the more rounded mountains of similar elevation in the central and northern parts of the state.

The road from Cortez northeast to Telluride is one I've only taken once before . It rises quite gradually through national forest land to Lizard Head Pass and a detour to a small mountain town named Ophir. Supposedly you can get from Ophir to Silverton via a Jeep trail, but that’s not a road I’d want to tackle even in a rental Jeep.

Telluride is a town I’ve only been to once before, and that was on the return from a road trip to California with my parents in 1994. The town is just so remote and far from Denver that it’s hard to justify visiting it as a destination when there are so many closer mountain towns. Thus it becomes a stop on a longer trio to elsewhere. Telluride, though, is probably my favorite town in Colorado because of its compact size, historic center, and spectacular location in a dead-end box canyon in the most rugged part of the San Juan Mountains. I need to come back here sometime to ski!

Doug and I drove to the end of the paved road at the ruins of an old mining operation and the overlook to Bridal Veil Falls . We began up a stretch of the 4WD Road to Imogene Pass, supposedly one of the highest passes and most rugged roads in Colorado but quickly turned around at a switchback. This is the kind of road where you not only need a 4WD vehicle but also a Jeep that’s especially high off the ground and without two much distance between front and back wheels for crossing boulder-strewn terrain.

WE returned to town and walked around a bit. Being Labor Day weekend and during the Telluride Film Festival, the town was a busy place and accommodation was going to be hard to find, so we resigned ourselves to having to camp somewhere. I went to a bookstore in search of a guidebook for local trails that we might hike the next day. If there’s one thing there’s no shortage of in the San Juan Mountains it’s hiking trails, but you still need to find the one that’s just right for your mood.

"Doug, I have an idea!"

Mount Sneffels is a nearby fourteener, one of only a few in the southwestern part of the state that’s relatively accessible and not too difficult to climb. Back in the days when I was trying to “bag” as many fourteeners as possible in the 1990s I had identified Mount Sneffels as one I wanted to do, but the vast distance from Denver led to continually put it off until a later date. I did some quick research in some of the books on climbing routes and access and proposed the idea to Doug. He’s climbed numerous fourteeners with me and agreed it was a great idea for a hike. In no time we were on our way across Dallas Divide to Ouray, the town near the easiest access for a Mount Sneffels climb. Wow, a spur of the moment fourteener climb decision! I usually spend weeks planning out a hike like this one.