Touring Southern Colorado, Part 3: Durango

For the last few days of our vacation, we stayed in Durango, a cute little town in southwestern Colorado. We did a lot of walking around town in Durango and relaxing in our condo, so it really felt like a vacation.

We did take one hike near Durango, but didn't make it all the way to our destination. We tried to climb Engineer Mountain (Grant and Dale were really excited about this particular peak because of its name), a 12,927-foot peak northeast of Durango. Engineer Mountain doesn't have any maintained trails leading to it's summit, and you might understand why that is by looking at this picture of the peak.

The last few hundred feet are extremely steep, climbing up scree slopes and scrambling through boulders to the top. All four of us (Dale, Grant, Adelaida, and I) got pretty close to the top, but we didn't feel comfortable taking Adelaida up the scree (it really required both hands and both feet to climb), so Grant stayed at the base of the scree slope while Dale and I continued up a little farther. By the time we got close to the top, the sky was looking pretty black, so we started back down and almost beat the rain back to the car.

We also saw some beautiful columbines on the trail.


Adelaida enjoyed hanging out with Grant during one of our Durango meals.


Grant, Dale, and Adelaida on the trail, with Engineer Mountain in the background.