adventure blog – Molly j tate

I love September! We were lucky enough to have my mom visit us this past weekend so we packed up the car and drove to Telluride. The gang included myself, my husband, my little sister, and my mom. Fall is jusssst in the air there with a cool chilly breeze in the morning and evening but nice sunny days. Plus the Aspen leaves were just starting to turn yellow! I truly hope that every human gets to experience being surrounded by canopies of golden leaves. It’s magic. Hokay! So, here is what we did:

Day 1

Telluride is a good 6 hour haul from Colorado Springs so by the time we got there, we were tired of sitting down and wanted some fresh air but didn’t have too much time to do anything crazy. The place we stayed at was a block walk from the (free!) gondola, so we rode that up the ski mountain to enjoy the views. Afterwards, we walked around downtown, enjoyed a gorgeous red-hued sunset, and went out to dinner at a delicious Thai restaurant called Siam. I highly recommend the Tom Kha Gai soup and the drunken noodles. Noods.

Day 2

This was all about a challenging hike. Keep in mind, my mother lives a sea level, is a certain age I will not disclose, and still crushed it up to 12,400 feet and over 8.5 miles! She was definitely feeling the altitude and oxygen deprivation and had to take many a break, but I’m so so so glad she got to witness the beauty of Ice Lake and Island Lake. To be fair, she’s a little crazy anyways so we weren’t sure if she was encephalopathic, if she had snuck in a “special” brownie, or if she was just her usual self. The weather got cold and windy at the top and there were even a few snowflakes, but there were brief periods of time that the sun shone on the lake, lighting.it.up. I’m not sure everybody enjoys the 4WD drive long along Ophir Pass as much as my husband and I do. Its a very narrow 4WD shelf road over a mountain pass with scree field on one side and cliff aka tumbling to your death on the other side with a hairpin turn added in there for funsies. But we survived! If you look closely at the picture on the right, you can see a tiny speck of a white truck.

The hike up to the lakes is almost as good as the destination. It’s just the most perfect little valley with huge rocks and water features thrown in. There was a lovely golden ochre undertone in the vegetation that made it feel very much like autumn.

So now I’m going to shut up and just let y’all appreciate this.

I mean….what??? God creates some BEAUTIFUL THINGS YALL. I chose not to filter or adjust color on these photos at all because the real deal speaks for itself. But also nothing can do it justice and its 7598475x more stunning in person and can bring you to tears.

Day 3

Some of our members were pretty dang sore so on day 3, we compromised and did half of an active day in the morning, and half of a chill day in the afternoon.

After driving up to Bridalveil Falls, these two adventurous fools and I tackled the Via Ferrata, a traversing route spanning the Box Canyon with views of Bridalveil Falls and Telluride 500′ beneath us while we were suspended on iron rungs by a harness! I’ve done it before and I’ll do it again and I know I’m safe, but this still gets my heart pumping. Especially when a nice gust of wind hits ya.

Then in the afternoon and evening, after watching football on the couch for a hot minute, we ventured around the shops of downtown, including an apothecary (which made my hippie heart swoon), a coffee shop, and a brewery.