Tuesday, September 29, 2015

Highland Mary Lakes - Silverton

A little over a month ago I hiked Highland Mary Lakes - a gorgeous hike southeast of Silverton. This one has been on my to-do list for a couple of years now - so when it was posted as a day trip for Western Slope Adventurers on my last free Summer weekend, I jumped at the chance to do it!

The hike is located in the Weminuche Wilderness - the largest wilderness in Colorado (official "wilderness" areas in the U.S. have very strict regulations and are different than other federal public lands). You can do this hike as a shorter out-and-back to the lakes and back, or make it into a loop. Since the organizer of the trip had done it several times, he recommended the loop and I can definitely see why - by doing this as a clockwise loop on part of the Continental Divide Trail, you get some awesome views of the magnificent Vestal and Arrowhead Peaks - two 13ers that are pretty sweet looking and I've always wanted to see.

Since I'm extremely behind on blogging, I'm just going to let my pictures tell the story from here-on-out:


The Cunningham Gulch Trail was what we first got onto to start out the loop.



How cool are these signs for the Continental Divide Trail?



First Views of Vestal and Arrowhead!

The route also intersected with The Colorado Trail.

The Hills are Alive! (And I LOVE the San Juans!!!)

Still a lot of wildflowers out considering it was the last weekend in August!


I feel like this would make a great cover for the summer edition of the Silverton Visitor's Guide :)


The first lake we got to wasn't actually a Highland Mary Lake - this one was called Verde Lake


Looking back at Verde Lake

One of the Highland Mary Lakes

Another of the Highland Mary Lakes


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