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| Trailhead, just up the bike trail from Main Street | Decription of Masontown, 1 mile up the hiking trail. Chris and Keith came along to see what was left of Masontown. | Looking down at twisted remains after the avalanche, nearly 100 years ago | Not sure what this used to be | Notice the brick work in the ground - paving stones, more clearly visible on the right | ||
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| Looking uphill, clearly this was an avalanche chute. In the foreground, hard to see but the ground is yellow from mine tailings | Further up the hill, looking further up the avalanche chute | The 2 goldens behind Bob belong to another hiker, we meet him here on the way up. | Overlook just above Masontown area, looking over Frisco | |||
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| The hills to the south of Frisco show large areas of dead trees, likely from the bark beetle investation :-( | Just past the overlook, the trail gets steep. | The steep part goes for a long ways, maybe 1/4 mile. | Trail guide says this is 19% grade. | Off to the left during this climb are several big holes. This one is smaller than most, with yellow mine tailings on the left. We're guessing this used to be a mine shaft, now collapsed. | ||
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| Finally the tail forks - right to Mt Royal, left to unofficially named Mt Victoria, one peak west. | We went right and met the hiker with dogs coming back down | Very friendly dogs | Rock cairn at the unofficial top of Mt Royal. Notice Bob looking down. | Here's what he's looking down at - I-70. It's pretty straight down here. | ||
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| Looking north-east at I-70 and the valley up to Green Mountain Reservoir | Bob | That's as close to the edge as I can get | My poor attempt at Cptn Morgan. We really needed Keith for a "Keith on the edge" shot here. | Looking down trail from the cairn top of Mt Royal. Is that Grays and Torres to the right? | ||
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| We descended a bit from the cairn to the fork in the trail and this time took the south fork, towards unofficial Mt Victoria. We think this used to be a mine shaft, collapsed. | Just up the trail from whatever that was, remains of a cabin with walls still standing. | Looking roughly north, a doorway in the far wall | I wuz here :-) | Looking east (doorway on the left), a window frame. | ||
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| Farther up the trail, remains of something too small to be a cabin, we're guessing a sluice box | Looking down into the remains | Same remains | View from here is pretty good, looking down at Dillon Reservoir | Further up where the trail to Mt Victoria is unmaintained (and pretty eroded), better views | ||
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| Taking a rest to enjoy the view. We debated turning around here. | We kept hiking up and up and up... and were rewarded with even better views | I-70 snaking east around Dillon Reservoir | Debating - looks like we're nearly at the top but it's hard to tell if the ridge just continues forever south-west or if there's a peak that ends the trail. Need the "End of Trail" sign here (see South Dakota trip) | "the sun-kissed peaks in the distance" :-). We're guessing we're at about 11,500 ft here. | ||
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| We went a few feet further to get a better view. Notice how steep the terrain is. | Ah, this view made all the climbing worthwhile. | Right | Left | Lots of boats down in the bay | ||
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| The townhouse we rented is hidden off to the left, around the next ridge | About to head back down this slippery slope | One last gaze at the view, but we want to be down well before sunset. We leave a message for Ann with a ETA of ~6:30pm in case they wanted to do an earlier dinner (yeah, right :-). | Yeah it's steep. Took us just over 2 hours to get up here (including the short climb to Mt Royal and back down). Was almost exactly the estimated 1:20 to get down to trailhead. | ||