Tuesday, June 27, 2017 - VELOCITY, HIPPIE TOWN, GLADSTONE

Charles & Jane and we had lunch in town then headed for Velocity Basin.  Storm Peak/Velocity is recognizable from several different trails.  It is where Olympian Shaun White practiced at the secret half-pipe that Red Bull built for him.   Here's an interesting video.  You may have to cut and paste the link in your browser.  It's not the video I was trying to find.  If you are interested, google Shaun White, Silverton & see what you find. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HuashKKpuZk

Today,  we were stopped by snow.  All this snow is actually the road to Velocity.  

You can see where some type of vehicle made it part way thru, but we chose not to try it today.  The snow was pretty dirty, but Jingles didn't care.  We traveled with a pretty muddy dog after this stop. 

The terrain here looks a little different:

This is the old Lead Carbonate Mill: 

On the trail thru Bonita Basin and Minnehaha Basin to what we call hippie town.  Lore is that some hippies came here to live off the grid, but had a change of heart once winter arrived. 

Two of hippie town buildings still standing.  You can see a mattress nailed to the top of a tree stump on the left side of the house - has been there forever.  The old Lincoln Continental that had become a haven for marmots has been removed.  

Someone has bought the land that abuts this property and is allegedly building a house.  The digging to date looks pretty weird:

Once again, the trail was blocked by snow, but the views from up here are so beautiful and Jingles was able to clean some of the mud off, running thru the clean snow. 

 The only critter we saw all day was this small deer:

You can't get to the Gold King Mine that blew out a couple of years ago (gated & locked), but we did pass some of the land restoration that is being done.  Had we been able to continue past Hippie Town, we could have looked down on that mine.  We came down and drove thru the Gladstone area, home to many mines.   

Here's so old mining structures that were still intact when we first started coming up here.  

Some of the ugly side of mining is visible here:

 Charles trying to figure out what is hidden behind the chicken wire & tar paper:

We received a ham radio call that one of the tour trucks was stuck in snow at the top of Corkscrew.  Charles & Jane went up to see if they could help pull them out.  Our job was go into town until we could get a phone signal, call the tour company in Ouray, and radio results back.  Well, three Jeeps with winches hooked double and a fourth Jeep hooked with a tow strap were eventually able to pull it out.  If I get some pictures, I will update this blog later. 

Here's one:

While we were sitting on the other side of town talking to the stranded group, I just took this picture of the outskirts of town: