Originally, I thought that we would do the top-rated hike on the Southwestern Colorado hiking website, the Sneffels Highline Trail. But it has over 3300' of elevation gain, and a distance
of nearly 13 miles; I figured that might be too aggressive for me. Looking through the other top rated hikes in the Telluride area, almost all of the trailheads required 4WD access, which disqualified them to us since we had a rental car. Hawn Mountain is a four star trail that is only 5 miles roundtrip. It is basically a climb up the side of
steep scree pile (with 13 switchbacks!) to the summit. At the top there is a ridge that you can walk along to get views of the nearby peaks. This is not a popular hike, we only saw a couple other people on the trail. Perhaps the threatening skies had something to do with the low number of fellow hikers. After completing the thirteen switchbacks, the trail heads straight up the slope. There isn't a definitive point that is the summit - instead, you walk along a ridge in between copses of trees and look out at the surrounding mountains. I used this website to try to identify the peaks visible from Hawn Mtn.
After finishing our hike, we went into Telluride, to walk around. I was curious about the free gondola rides. They are indeed free - just jump on and you can ride up, and then down the other side. The gondola cars have hooks on the outside, so mountain bikers loaded their bikes onto the outside,
then rode up to the summit where could then zoom back down the mountainside. It looked fun. It takes more than an hour to reach Telluride from Ouray. Inevitably, we found ourselves stuck behind recreational vehicles. The rule of the road is that if there are more than 5 vehicles behind an RV, it supposed use one of the turnouts at let all the traffic pass. Apparently RV drivers are unaware of this rule. For dinner this night we had a BBQ chicken pizza. Ed and Suz and Rayden stopped by our hotel and we made plans for visiting Porphyry Basin the next day. I copied the map and trail profile from the Hiking & Walking Hawn Mountain website
Panorama Photos
Short Videos
Video from top of Hawn Mtn
Photos from Hawn Mountain Trail
