I took a road trip through southwest Colorado, stopping at a few of my favorite towns. Durango, Silverton, Ouray, Montrose, Crested Butte, and more. The Million Dollar Highway was on my list, again, because of course it was. It’s one of the most scenic drives you could ever take. I will say this hike was an accident. Yes, an accident. Let’s go hiking on the Million Dollar Highway (or San Juan Skyway).

First let’s get the details out of the way

DETAILS:

Trail Name: Red Mountain Mining Area OHV Trail
Trailhead Address: Highway 550, between Silverton and Ouray. GPS 37.92187,-107.6985
Directions: If coming south from Ouray, it’s shortly after the Ironton free camping area on the left. The trailhead is right at the base of a sharp turn. Room for a few vehicles to park at the bottom. There is 1-2 parking spots just “inside” the trail as well, but do not drive further unless you have a 4×4 or other such vehicle
Trail Length: 3mi out and back, but be prepared to hike longer

Admission fee: none
Difficulty: Easy
Elevation Gain: 524 ft
Dogs: Not labeled or anything but I’m sure they’re allowed
Restrooms: None
Parking: Enough room for a few vehicles
Visited: Sept 2021

Now back to this happy accident.

If I learned any one thing on this trip it would be this: Check for ANY sort of construction on EVERY road you drive down. Also to read reviews closely, and listen to your gut… but those two pieces of advice are for another day.
While researching for this trip, I found out about the construction on 50 bewteen Montrose and Gunnison. I did NOT find out about the construction on 550 between Silverton and Ouray.

I did not find out about this until we were leaving Silverton on our way to Ouray. We got a bit out of town before seeing the construction signs. Turns out, the road was going to be closed from 1:30 until 5:30, and it was already after 1. Knowing we wouldn’t make it through on time… we did what anyone should do and went back to Silverton for a beer. (This is a good time to note that I recommend both Avalanche Brewing AND Golden Block Brewery. A few years back I had the best sour of my life at Avalanche… and this trip we sat at the Golden Block bar enjoying beer and planning the next step.)

The itinerary for the day was supposed to be easy.
Pack up camp in Durango.
Drive north.
Visit Silverton.
Visit Ouray.
Stop for the night at Orvis Hot Springs and camp.

It did not go as planned.
The road closure was soooo close to Ouray that you could almost see the darn town from there, which was frustrating, but I do understand needing to close down these types of thin winding mountain roads completely to do the work. It was all on me for not doing enough research to know about the closure.
I wasn’t even planning on hiking in this area. This was just supposed to be a driving the million dollar highway road trip.

The bar top made for a good place to lay out a new plan though. Deciding that the weather was amazing, we’d just attempt to find a place to hike to kill some time until it opened back up. There are a LOT of hikes in the area. A lot a lot.
My criteria for this one: It needed to be between Silverton and the road closure. It had to be easy enough or short enough that we wouldn’t be out there for 6+ hours. It had to be long enough that we could spend our time wandering and not end up with a quick hour long walk and still have time to kill. I demanded amazing views.

The Red Mountain Mining trail ended up being the winner. The photos made it look like there would not only be great views, but also awesome stuff to hang out and explore. I could make this hike as long as I wanted, just based on how much I wanted to wander. There are all sorts of other little trails off here, and you could extend it further than we did.

This trail was just before the closure, so it would work out perfectly.

Hiking on the Million Dollar Highway

The Red Mountain Mining trail is an OHV trail. That means that the trail isn’t a narrow hiking trail. It is wide enough for vehicles to go down.
At the start, I wondered if I made a mistake by choosing this one. The first bit of it just seemed like you were walking down a road. Trust me when I say that while it’s just a wide trail, it’s still worth hiking for some great views.

There are a few houses along this road. You’ll know by the private property signs. There’s also some industrial work you can see from certain parts of the trail. Yes, the industrial stuff does take away from the overall beauty of the area, but it’s a small portion of the hike.

The hike itself starts riiiight at a bend in the road. There is a bit of room right at the front, on the side of the road. It’s big enough for a few vehicles to park. You won’t want to start to drive up the dirt OHV road unless you have a 4×4. You CAN get away with driving a smaller car a bit of the way in. There’s a parking spot on the left sliiiiiightly up the hill, but that’s probably as far as I’d drive.

Few and far between with seeing others on this hike. When pulling in, we passed two fun looking jeeps that were leaving. About a mile into the trail, a regular ol ford e150 beaten up van passed us, driving up for some off road fun. Other than that we passed 3 people on dirt bikes, and a couple on a motorcycle. If you ride, this is probably a very fun trail.

Outside of the offroad community, the main draw of this trail are the multiple ruins of old mines all along it.
I don’t mean you’ll pass by a mine you can see from a bit away… I mean you will be able to wander around the ruins of MULTIPLE mines!
The only mine that had a sign on it (at least, that I noticed) showing the name was the Yankee Girl.

The trail itself is easy, as long as you’re okay with the altitude. There’s only 500ft of elevation gained from bottom to top, BUT you are sitting at 10,200 feet or so at the beginning of the trail.

The trail is wide enough for a vehicle to pass the entire length of it. It does climb. The entire trail is straight uphill. It’s a gradual slope though, so it’s not bad. Then you have the “out” portion of the out and back to look forward to, for the downhill portion. WOO.

You’ll pass over water crossings in multiple areas depending on the way you go. Most of them are very orange or rust colored. The high amount of minerals in the soil here does some cool stuff to the landscape, and the water is just a little piece of that.

You’ll have amazing views of the red mountains the entire way up, colored from the iron ore that covers them.

Just a note, the trail can get a bit confusing at times because there are some various directions you can take. If you use the Alltrails app, download the map to use. We took the marked trail (marked on the app, the red line in the photo under here) up, and wandered around a lot at the top and ended up taking a completely different part of the trail/road back down again.

The red line on this is the trail itself as it’s marked on AllTrails… and instead of going back down the same route, I highly recommend scooting over and taking that little loop off just labeled “31”, because there’s so much more there… and it meets right back up with the trail again near the bottom.

Did I mention the views?
The views are mind blowing.

Autumn is always my favorite time to visit anywhere with more trees, to watch the leaves slowly start to turn. It was fairly early in September, so there weren’t any deep oranges or reds yet, but there were still plenty of dots of yellow.

The History

I didn’t know anything about this place before doing the hike. I’m sure I didn’t see all there was to see, and probably missed a lot. I’m doing a google search right now to learn a bit more about the area, so let’s learn together!

The Red Mountain Mining District was the site of a historic silver boom, from 1882-1893.

This link talks in detail about it.
https://www.legendsofamerica.com/red-mountain-mining-district/

I always get a bit womp womp reading about this type of stuff after the fact. I would have LOVED to know some of this, or looked at the map on ^that page up there so I could have looked for some of the other areas and known what I was really seeing.

If you’re doing this hike for all the old mines, make sure you look and find the rest of the little ghost towns in the area. I didn’t know about it until right this instant (again, womp womp hahaha)… but juuuust north of here you’ll see the Ironton road area. If you pull into the south entrance (seriously?! We parked at the north entrance to the road for a bit and never knew this!! ugh!) there seems to be a few old houses and remains of a bit of a ghost town. That one looks like it may be the most popular one to visit.

Finishing Up

In case anyone wants to know how far off the rest of the day went… Remember that Itinerary for the day I mentioned?

Pack up camp in Durango.
Drive north.
Visit Silverton.
Visit Ouray.
Stop for the night at Orvis Hot Springs and camp.

Nothing else went as planned after this. By the time we made it through the road closure, we wouldn’t have time to stop before needing to find a place to crash before dark. We ended up driving straight through Ouray (knowing we’d stop back in the next day). The plan was to camp at Orvis Hot Springs. I called 2 weeks prior to make reservations, and the girl on the phone said “we have so much parking, you really don’t need to reserve. You just show up and let us know you want to stay”. We did that, and were told “no it’s full why didn’t you make reservations”. Oh, um. Okay. *sigh*

Another pivot I suppose. Since the plan the next morning was to hike Blue Lakes, we went on to try to boondock near the trailhead there.
That ALSO didn’t go as planned.
Turns out, Vincent (the van) needed new shocks. Did not realize how bad until attempting the dirt road. Halfway in, we turned around because poor Vincent was shaking to pieces. Really, I thought he would fall apart, and that isn’t an exaggeration. 🙁

We didn’t make it back off that road until after dark. I couldn’t find any other spots using my boondocking apps that weren’t down questionable dirt roads. We love them usually, but ALWAYS attempt them before the sun goes down, just in case.
Feeling exhausted and needing showers, we gave up and started calling hotels. It took 6 of them before we found one with an opening.

The Ridgway Lodge and Saloon.
This place could be it’s own post because of what it took to get a room there. After struggling to get the owner (assuming it was the owner) to even acknowledge my existence, we ended up in a $200 room that smelled like an ashtray. 2/10, do not recommend.

Overall, it was a heck of a PIVOT! type of day. Totally worth it for this hike, though!
Next time you plan to drive the million dollar highway, you should stop and hike it too.

If waterfalls are more your jam, there are plenty of those too!! I picked a few southeast of here, closer to Pagosa Springs to explore.

Have you been on this hike?
Come chat about it with me on Instagram, or see what else you can do in Colorado.