Telluride: A hiker's paradise...

Will worked hard at his Neuromorphic Computing workshop. They went from 9 am until at least 5 or 6 pm each day, with a mixture of guest lectures and working on the projects. Then for the first week he was there he would also go back each night for an 8 pm talk. I occupied myself by heading out on the numerous hiking trails pretty much every day. As you can see from the map below, the area is just riddled with mostly well marked and signposted trails.

I spoke to a woman at the information desk who recommended I start with the Bear Creek trail to acclimatise. I was feeling the effects of sleeping at such a high altitude for the first couple of nights. I was a bit head-achy and didn't sleep too well. However, after a few days my body adjusted and I felt fine.

The Bear Creek walk was lovely. It was a good starter because it didn't gain (or lose) much altitude, it was only about 2 hours return, plus it had awesome views and a very nice waterfall at the end.

Here is a selection of pics from some of my other walks. Trails I walked included: Ridge, Village, Sheridan, Basin, Prospect and Boomerang trails.

I saw a bit of wildlife while out and about, but unfortunately no bears... When speaking to locals they said it is very hit and miss when and where you get to see them, but there are plenty around. They have been known to come right into the Mountain Village at night. However, I did see LOADS of chipmunks...

  

Marmots were also all over the place.

Prairie Dogs were pretty common...

One day I saw what is either a female elk or female deer, I'm not too sure which.

However, I think my favourite animal was the super cute little Pika.

During the second week I had my biggest day out on the hills. It ended up being an epic 23km 7 hours plus day, combining parts of 4 different trails. I started by taking the See Forever trail to the very top of the ski hill at over 12000 feet.

The trail certainly lived up to its name and I got gorgeous 360 degree views.

There was still a bit of snow around at the top, which is pretty amazing considering the temperature was in the low to mid thirties for the whole two weeks we were in Telluride.

Once I'd eaten my lunch at the top of the hill I back-tracked a bit and took the Wasatch Connection trail over the hill and into the next canyon. You can see it in the pic above, heading off to the left. This was my favourite part of the walk. There were more stunning views of the surrounding peaks...

But there were also meadows and hillsides covered in wildflowers.

Sometimes the snow on the trail made life a bit difficult, especially when it was quite a narrow single-track trail with a reasonably steep drop-off at times!

The Wasatch Connection joined up with the Wasatch trail once I had lost quite a bit of altitude (quite quickly, via a series of steep gravel switch-backs, my poor knees!). This trail was still very scenic.

The trail passed the remains of an old abandoned mine.

Eventually I hit Bear Creek, and just had to follow the Bear Creek trail back to Telluride. This part of the walk was a breeze. It felt like walking on a 6-lane highway after the terrain I'd had for most of the day! I came across more people walking on this section of the track than I had for the whole rest of the day. Once in Telluride I caught the gondola back up the mountain to our condo, tired but happy after a brilliant day of walking.