Silverton, Colorado 2011: August 19, 2011

Picayune Gulch/Placer Gulch

Today we left our campsite about 9:50 to head out to Picayune Gulch and on through Placer Gulch. The ride itself is a very short ride, unless you are stopping and taking pics like I do ... it was a bit longer :) We got home about 1:50 or so ... and when we started heading home, we actually were going to ride some more, but we got caught in a heavy downpour so we had to boogie home. Thank goodness all of us quadders are always ready for any kind of weather - including Tressa - she has her own raincoat as well. Dean has a pic of her on my quad with her raincoat, so I will have to get them from him to show you.

110 is the main dirt road from Eureka uup to the different trails as well as to Animas Fork
As you can see from the black line, we turned left off of the 110 and followed the trail up to Picayune Gulch.
The Picayune Gulch section is steep, particularly on the lower sections.

I took this as we were just starting up the trail and the moutains and the clouds were just so beautiful

This is taken between the roofs of the Treasure Moutanin Mine - again, I have other pics and plan to put these up for you ... This mine is located about mid way up Picayune Gulch. I do have a great shot of the boarding house from a previous year, so when we get home, I will get that up as well.

This is one of the old cabins in behind the Treasure Mountain Mine

This is part of the actual Treasure Mountain mining building

This is now above the Treasure Mountain Mine and we are in the 'gulch' area of Picayune Trail.

Now remember as you look these pics over ... look at the mountain tops ... we are not at ground level in any sense of the word. We are pretty close to the top of this set of mountain range. If you go back and look at the map, you can see about how high we were sitting at. It is probably close to 11000 ft.

One of the neates things about this area that I liked so much is that in the middle of this valley

on top of the moutain are these little pockets of forest - a couple of years ago, Dean and I took some pictures of just a small herd of deer that was in amongst these little pockets of forests. It is really very pretty to say the least. I will bring in another picture later that shows how the little pockets of trees look up on Picayune Gulch. If you look at teh trail to the left of the picture, you can see where we will be heading ... Placer Gulch.

We followed this trail that takes us around the corner and then we will start into the area of Placer Gulch. The road and the greenery here is outstanding ...

Now you may wonder - is this the way Dean and Diana camp??? ha ha ha --- NOT!

Beleive it or not, this is a shepherds tent - it is there I guess from the time they start herding the sheep after the snow until snow starts again. They must bring a lot of this stuff up by truck and drop it off as he had several bags of feed there for his mule. Later, I will put up the pic I took of the herd of sheep along the mountain side, which by the way is no where near here :) We ran across two of these shepherd tents this year. Don't know if they are one shepherd or two ...

This is on top of the Picayune Gulch getting ready to head on the trail to Placer Gulch.

This is looking down from where we came. That particular trail you see is not where we came from but our trail is below that forest line.

This is on the next rise looking down at the top of Picayune Gulch ... we had followed this trail out of the forest to where you see it split ... the trail to the left that goes back into the forest will eventually take you back down to where it hits 110 again, but not exactly where we started at. We have never gone back down that way. The trail to the right, I was told is really rocky and treacherous going over the top of that hill - Dean and Wayne went over it one year and Dean said he didn't think I would want to go there ... therefore, at the fork, we turned around and came back towards the forest in the foreground.

As we backtracked, we took another fork in the road that heads us over to Placer Gulch ... on the way there, we came across this cabin overlooking this beautiful area ... guess what - a sign saying private property ... so this was as close as we could get to it.

looking into another direction from almost the same spot ...you can see the road we came on to the far right of this picture.

I don't know what these plants are, but I sure love them ... if anyone knows, let me know. I have not found them anyplace else on any of the trails we have ever been on ... for sure not down lower either.

If you look in the upper left corner, you can see the trail we came up on.

Although this pic is in the exact same spot as the one 4 pics up, I took this one to get these great plants in the forground.

Here I am looking back to where we just came from ... if you look at the tiny light green top in middle of picture by the road ... that is the shepherd's tent you saw earlier.