Jeeping to Ouray
by Adam Reed
Four years ago, finally free after a decade in an abusive marriage, I moved to California and bought a Jeep. I went to the lot looking to buy a stripped-down Wrangler, which was about all that I could afford. Then I noticed a Grand Cherokee that stood out among the sedate, citified Grand Cherokees on the used vehicle lot - because it had, under it, a high-clearance off-road suspension. As I approached it, I saw that it had never been used off-road; it lacked the inevitable scratches and nicks that come with real jeeping. And when I got inside, I saw why. It also had leather-covered six-way-adjustable power seats, a studio-quality sound system, a sunroof-moonroof, and every most-expensive-option feature in the dealer's catalogue. It even had a six-way transfer case, which included, in addition to the freeway-rain-snow-and-ice settings of a typical commuter's SUV, a low range whose gear ratios had been copied from the field artillery jeeps of the Korean War. Clearly, this Grand Cherokee's original owner only used it to impress others with how much money he could afford to spend; its second owner only used the interior. And with two previous owners, four years on the clock, and the better part of a hundred thousand miles on the odometer, I bought it for less than the new-vehicle price of the stripped-down Wrangler that I had come to buy.
Ever since I first drove a four-wheel-drive vehicle, an International Scout II farm truck with manual hubs that I bought as an impecunious postdoc, I've been aware of a special connection between jeeping and being human. Sure, I can run and I can swim - and so can a dog. And I play chess, but it feels too much like a floating abstraction, nowhere animal enough for me as an animal - even an animal of the mind. Jeeping is when this animal's mind challenges reality by driving a superbly agile machine, one of the mind's noblest products, into fun. I already had a woman who loves me for all the fun that I have and that we have together. Now all I needed was a trail.
Which, in California, is a problem. We have paved roads going everywhere that's worth driving to. We also have jeep trails, but those, with the exception of some great trails open only to government emergency vehicles and hikers on foot, generally don't go anywhere in particular. I've used California jeep trails, such as they are, to recover and maintain my skill, and that was it. And I've hiked the closed jeep trails, thinking about how much fun they would be to drive, and then, at night, driving them in my dreams.
Finally, this summer, my wife and I and two friends from Los Alamos took a vacation in Telluride, Colorado. The occasion was the Telluride Mushroom Festival, which my friends selected because of my notoriety as a hunter and cook of wild mushrooms. The festival was disappointing. Two of the three wild mushroom forays took us to places where there were few or no mushrooms. At the professionals competition, one famous chef cooked a chanterelle soup that just was not in the same class as the chanterelle soup I had cooked for the festival pot-luck (I made mine with sorel leaves and poblano peppers.) Yet, there was still Colorado.
Ayn Rand's fans don't agree on whether the geographical location of Galt's Gultch was Ouray or Telluride. Each town is surrounded by spectacular mountains, in a valley so steep that one can't see the town from an airplane unless one happens to fly directly above. I'd vote for Telluride, because Ouray is too twisty to fit an airstrip, but Ouray has its partisans. And there is the jeep trail between them, described like this in the tourist guide:
Imogene Pass Telluride to Ouray
Time: 2-3 hours, plus stopping time
Distance: 18 miles
Difficulty: Double Blue (Advanced Intermediate; High Clearance 4WD)
Description: A thrilling point-to-point trip that passes through ghost towns and dozens of mines. This is Colorado's second-highest pass, at 13,114 feet, and offers spectacular views in every direction.
The Beta: From Telluride, follow Oak St. north to the top, where it intersects with Tomboy Rd., heading right (east) as it climbs up and away from town. Be sure to take in the views of Telluride and Bridal Veil Falls and of the hydroelectric plant located at the back of the box canyon. The switchbacks heading up past the falls are part of the notorious Black Bear Pass, one of the most difficult mountain passes in Colorado. The road goes past several waterfalls and through a small tunnel that was blasted out in the mining days. Just before making the steep ascent to the top of the pass, you will see remnants of the town of Tomboy. One can only imagine living year-round in such an environment, and it is easy to understand how the area got the name of Savage Basin. From the top of the pass the views are panoramic in every direction, making it a good place to stop for lunch and take in the scenery. The end of the road drops you in Ouray, where you can soak in the hot springs pool and find a place to eat.
You read it right: the pass, between the mountains, is at 13,114 feet. Finally, a trail worthy of my jeep, and one that actually goes somewhere.
The first two miles of the trail were still on the outskirts of Telluride, with bicyclists and hikers and daringly engineered houses with a shiny Cadillac Escalade or Porsche Cayenne in every driveway, just for show, because the road itself was smooth enough for a town car. Then the houses stopped and the road continued, a bit bumpier and steeper, until we got to the first big view, of Bridal Veil Falls, and I switched the transfer case into a mild suburban four-wheel setting. The road continued like this - spectacular views, but no challenge to any vehicle more capable than a Subaru station wagon - all the way to the Tomboy ghost mine. Evan from Tomboy to Imogene Pass, the road stayed steep but smooth. It rained briefly, and the potholes and ravines in the road filled, and the waterfalls multiplied. We stopped at the pass, and looked at the spectacular views in both directions, and imagined Dagny flying blind into the Telluride airstrip, and ate lunch. I felt a bit off from lack of challenge. I needn't have.
The way down to Ouray was rougher and steeper. Part way down the second slope from the pass, the trail turned down so steeply that I could not see it at all from the driver's seat, and I got out of the Jeep to see what I was facing. When I got back in, I put the transfer case in field-artillery low range, and the shift in first gear. I was finally on a path that nothing could traverse short of a mule or a Jeep.
The only other vehicles we saw were military-style Wranglers and an occasional Land-Rover. My wife and I were of the same trail in our leather seats, listening to Saint-Saens in better fidelity than at home. I thought of my Grand Cherokee on Arizona and New Mexico freeways, the ones on which all drivers treat the official 75-mile-per-hour speed limit as a minimum, nimbly passing effeminate Italian "sports cars" around mountain curves. Now the same Jeep was climbing in and out of mountain streams swollen with rain, down-and-up thirty-degree slopes over rain-slick boulders. On one down-twist the Grand Cherokee slipped on a wet slope, and I steered it away from the mile-plus precipice on one side, stopping inches from the sheer rock wall on the other.
We saw picas and marmots and mountain deer and one stately elk. At one point my wife wanted to stop and look at the rainbow over a waterfall, and I pulled over to one side of the road - the wall side, not the precipice side. The road looked wide enough for another Jeep to pass me on the other side, although it had been an hour since we saw other humans. Just then, coming in the other direction, was a six-wheel Swiss Army personnel carrier converted into some kind of sightseeing bus. It was wider than any Jeep, and I noticed that opposite my Grand Cherokee the road had a notch over the precipice, recently worn by an overactive mountain stream. The six-wheel tourist vehicle passed me anyway, each of the three wheels on the side opposite my Jeep dropping over the notch into the precipice in its turn, the passengers not knowing whether to giggle or to scream.
Ouray was beautiful and, unlike the proverbially Californicated Telluride, had some interesting books in its bookstores. We drove back to Telluride on paved roads. The sixty miles - North, then West, then South, then East, then South again - took one hour. The 18 miles from Telluride to Ouray over Imogene Pass had taken three. They were worth, in full, the two thousand miles it took to get there from California and back.
Discuss this Article (12 messages)
|
