Of Hot Springs and Cold Feet

Ouray - named after Chief Ouray - pronounced Yu-ray - of the Ute tribe was a unique place to stay in. Established in the 19th Century when gold and silver mines were dug in the surrounding mountains and located close to a series of natural hot springs, the town is now a centre for, you guess it, hiking, biking and mountaineering in the summer and for skiing, ice climbing and suchlike activities in the winter. The area is known as 'The Switzerland of America' and with the snow-capped mountains, forests and rivers around it the comparison is justified.
( Ouray street scene. Notice only Main Street is paved, the other streets and avenues are just dirt. Well, what's the point of paving them when they are covered with ice and snow for six or so months in the year and nearly everyone in town drives 4x4s or uses ATVs?)
We stayed in the Box Canyon Motel which was built in the 1950s so as to make use of the natural hot springs that come out of the rocks in the canyon. The motel is heated by the geo-thermic waters in winter and there are four hot tubs just behind the motel for guest use. After eating on Sunday night we sat out on the deck of a local bar drinking local beer and listening to a marvellous guitarist who played both his own compositions as well as folk singer standards. Though it was a cold evening it was great just to sit and listen to good music. Monday morning, after checking out of the motel, we found the Batchelor-Syracuse Mine, paid our money and went about 1,800 feet into a mountain on an electric train to get some idea of what mining in the area was like in the past. This mine, like every other mine in the area, stopped commercial mining in the late 1980s or the early 90s when the cost of mining the precious metals exceeded the value of the gold and silver that could be extracted. Also the environmental pollution of the land and rivers due to extraction processes using mercury and cyanide were no longer acceptable. (Some of our tour group down the mine)

A well spent hour or so was followed by an hour of panning for gold in a local creek. This is an activity that needs practice to do well but even so we had a feeling of satisfaction when we picked our own panned pieces of iron pyrites and other shiny minerals out of our pans. Oh, and I did find one very small flake of gold in my pan. However the flake was so small it could only be picked up using a plastic pipette so there was no possibility of me getting rich by panning for the mother lode that day.
From Ouray we drove south to Durango on probably one of the scariest drives of my life. From an elevation of around 9000 feet the road rose to nearly 11,000 feet as it wound its way over a number of high passes past the town of Silverton then down to about 6,500 feet into Durango. Imagine a two lane road clinging to the sides of huge mountains with steep descents and equally scary ascents and with most of the way, no barriers between drivers and sheer drops of 100s or 1000s of feet. Why no barriers? Most of the area is avalanche area and to keep the roads open in the winter accumulations of snow are blasted off the high peaks. Any barriers would just be ripped away by the resulting induced or natural avalanches ergo no barriers! I kept in low gear all the way down the road and after nearly an hour and three quarters never was a driver more pleased to see the signs for Durango.