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San Juan
Mountains Train & Trail Ride Adventure
::Continued::
Mary Chornton, owner of San Juan Back Country
explains, “We take the guests through fun and
unique terrain. You come here for the beauty,
not to see how fast you can go. Back Country is
all about site seeing and enjoying the moment
and up here there is a new moment around each
corner.”
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Doug Bogart
took us on our ride in the Kawasaki Teryx4
750 4x4 & there is a staging area
for off-road riding just a few miles outside
of town, since ATV or SxS vehicles aren't
allowed on the streets of Silverton
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For our adventure, San Juan Backcountry’s trail
guide, Doug Bogart, took us out for a full day
exploring with the 2013 Kawasaki Teryx4 SxS. Since
Silverton doesn’t allow any riding in town, we
had to trailer up the Kawasaki Teryx4 and drive
to the trail head just over a mile outside of
town.
Our adventure began with a several mile drive
down the Animas Forks Rd, which took us through
the town of Howardsville, which was a large Gold
and Silver mining town years ago, and there are
plans to reopen the mine once again. We turned
off onto route 4, which took us past the Old Hundred
Gold Mine, which offers mining tours. The Old
Hundred Mine turned out to be a mining flop as
investors spent over 20 million mining for ore,
but only found 5 million in ore, so today it is making
a profit as a mine touring attraction.
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The Old Hundred
Mine offers tours & it is a popular
school field trip location
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We also passed by several old tram houses along
the way before beginning on climb to the top of
Canby Mountain on the old Stony Pass trail, which
provided some breath taking vistas of the valley
below as we climbed up from the valley floor at
nearly 10,000 feet to over 13,000 feet at the
summit. We also crossed the Continental Divide.
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After
near level ride in the valley on a dirt
road for several miles we started up the
Stony Pass Trail, which has a series of
switchbacks as you quickly gain elevation
with every turn & the light rain in
the valley quickly turned to snow as we
climbed to the top |
Unfortunately for us, the weather was less than
ideal with heavy snow at times that was quickly
accumulating on the trail, so once up top, the
views were blocked by the clouds and snow, but
we still were able to check out a few mines along
the way including the Buffalo Boy and Gary Owens
Mine before we made our descent back down the
Stony Pass, which took us just a few hours.
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Once
we reached the top of Stony Pass at 12,650
feet, the ground was covered in snow &
it was snowing sideways at one time, but it
was awesome to check out some of the old
mining sites |
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Hank &
Alice just returned from there tour on
a two up Arctic Cat ATV
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On our way back into Silverton, we met up with Alice
and Hank Rethley from Houston, Texas along the trail
during their ATV tour, which was their first time
on an ATV. “It was a blast. I was a little nervous
at beginning, but it was plenty easy. We went all
the way up to a lake, and our guide was great. It
got a little hard to see at the higher elevations
with the crazy snow and my glasses fogging over
but we had a great time,” regarded Hank of the adventure.
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