Colorado in the XJ

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Took my dad and the XJ out to Colorado for almost a week. Ran a bunch of passes, visited a few Basins and camped a lot, all but one day, we rented a room in Ouray for a night to shower and do laundry.

Northern NM near Raton.


Near Cordova pass. A dead end trail at 11,400 feet we found a nice campsite at. We decided to camp lower due to altitude. We had no acclimation at this point and were feeling the effects of altitude here after coming from less than 1000 feet of elevation.


Veteran's Memoria in Fort Garland, Co.


The start of the west side of Hayden's Pass. We were headed east over the mountains via this pass instead of paved roads to link up with a group of guys from the "Jeep Talk Show" somewhere along Medano Pass.


The top of Hayden Pass. THis pass had long steep climbs and decents and lots of loose rock.


The next day we hit up Monarch and Old Monarch Passes and the proceeded to hit lots of pavement to get on a trail that will lead to Stony Pass.




I took this photo off of the road heading towards our second night camp and Stony Pass. Figured this would have made a great advert in the 90s for the TJ.
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The next day on Stony Pass




My dad and I on a poser rock on Stony Pass


Headed to Kite Lake. An out and back trail that ends at a very nice alpine lake with some very blue and clear water with a waterfall coming in from the top. The water from this lake was flowing down the trail to Kite Lake, making for a wet climb to the lake.




Kite Lake






Stony Pass summit




During our run on Stony Pass my vacuum booster failed so the next day we made a run to Montrose and replaced it in an Oriley's Parking lot. I picked some random roads going back towards Telluride and wound up on "Last Dollar Road" going to Last Dollar Mountain, where I would end up coming into the south end of Telluride.







Spotted this herd of Elk during a hill climb.


Last Dollar Mountain. We found some nice campsites up here. Was a good spot for lunch, we watched small jets fly in and out of Telluride Regional airport, which would be just to the left of this photo behind that mountain.



We skipped visiting Telluride for this day and went straight to Imogene Pass. During this whole trip you could tell the XJ was gasping for air and way under powered but, it did well and kept eating up the miles and altitude.






At the top of Imogene Pass


People were clogging up the area around the sign so we just pulled down the road a bit and took a long range photo.




After coming off of Imogene we hit the road back into Ouray to meet up with the group, we spent the day split up since I had to deal with the blown Vacuum booster. After perusing the maps a bit I located a spot just north of town that might have a campsite so we went and explored it and found a few spots left at the very end of the trail about 20 mins from the Ouray.




The next day we hit up Black Bear with the group and had lunch in Telluride. I did a little gift shopping for the kids then while the group ran Imogene which we already did we ran Ophir back to the Million Dollar HIghway and met up with the group as they were coming off of Imogene and ran up to Yankee Boy Basin. My dad and I did Silver Basin on the way back.