Welcome to Wag Week!
We will be in the Chicago Basin for the next five days, but in spite of the name, it’s not in Chicago, it’s in Colorado. I’m excited!
Albatrossity and BillinGlendale will be back next week, as usual.
Wag
As many of you know, my wife and I are on a journey to climb all 58 of Colorado’s 14,000 ft high peaks. I have posted previously about individual peaks in stand alone posts with OTR, however this summer we had a trip that deserves so much more.
We traveled to the San Juan Mountains to climb a set of four peaks in the Needle Mountains, an isolated range in the Weminuche Wilderness. The Weminuche is the largest wilderness area in the Colorado, and is ¾ the size of Rhode Island. The Wilderness is bisected by the Durango & Silverton Narrow Gauge Railway, an historic railway that dates to 1882. IT connects the mining town of Silverton to the town of Durango at the base of the San Juan Mountains. The railway follows the Animas River through a rugged canyon in a trip that takes about four hours.
All aboard!
About halfway through the canyon, the train makes a stop at a small siding at the former site of the town of Needleton. The train drops climbers and backpackers off at a suspension bridge that provides access to Needle Creek and the spectacular Chicago Basin.
While crossing the suspension bridge, we looked down and saw a rock stack on the edge of a small island in the river. The stack is about 6 feet tall.