Category: Short Drive Away

It did not occur to me until I had lived here a while that darkness is a resource. You do not think of it that way. Nobody grows up thinking of the dark as something a place can have more or less of, or something you could run out of, or something worth protecting. But there is a scale for it — the Bortle scale — and it runs from 1 to 9, where 9 is downtown and 1 is as dark as the sky gets anywhere on earth.

We are a 1.

That is not a local exaggeration and it is not the Chamber talking. It is a measurement, and it is the reason there is now an International Dark Sky Park up the road at the Slumgullion Center, and it is the reason a bunch of people who care a great deal about the night sky come here every June for Star Fest.

Star Fest is free. All of it, every event, which I want to say early because I think people assume a festival means a wristband and a ticket price. It does not. It is a weekend in the back half of June, and the dates move around from year to year — 2025 was late June, 2026 was the middle of it — so check the calendar rather than taking my word for when.

There are three pieces of it that I would tell anybody to do.

The first is the big telescopes up on Slumgullion Pass. This is the main event and it happens after dark on Saturday, when everybody drives south out of town on 149 and up to the observatory site at the top of the pass, which sits around eleven thousand feet with nothing around it making light in any direction. There are serious telescopes set up and people who know how to point them. You can bring your own if you have one. Two things about the drive: it is genuinely cold up there at night in June, colder than you will believe standing in town at seven in the evening, so bring more layers than you think and something to sit on and something hot to drink. And dim your headlights as you come up on the site. Everybody there has spent thirty minutes getting their eyes adjusted and one set of brights undoes all of it.

The second is the planetarium, which is a mobile one that lives at the Lake City Community School — it was donated to the school by the University of Colorado — and gets set up during the festival. They run solar viewing outside it during the day, where you look at the actual sun through a telescope built for that, and then you go inside the planetarium for the night sky. My honest opinion is that this is the single best part of the weekend if you have kids along, because it happens in the afternoon and it is indoors and it does not require anybody to stay up until eleven at eleven thousand feet.

The third is the movie. The Mountaineer Theatre on Gunnison Avenue puts on a space movie during Star Fest and lets everybody in free. The year they showed Forbidden Planet — a 1956 science fiction picture, robots and ray guns and a very serious narrator — in a one-screen theater that has been running since 1975, on the original kind of equipment, in a town with the darkest sky in the state, was about as close to a perfect evening as I can describe to you.

And here is the part I did not know until somebody told me, which reframed the whole thing.

The man who runs the astronomy programs is the man who owns the movie theater.

His name is Phillip Virden. He grew up in Garland, Texas, and when he was four years old his two older brothers showed him Mars through the family telescope. In sixth grade his teacher showed the class the Mercury launches and took them on a field trip to a planetarium at a school in Dallas. Then in 1973 he moved to Lake City, and the first time he saw the Milky Way from up here he said it was like being back in that planetarium, only a hundred times better. Two years later he opened the Mountaineer. He has been running free public stargazing for this town for something like forty years, most of it at the Windy Point overlook, and he was a National Weather Service observer for thirty-five of those years, and he writes the sky column in the paper.

So a kid gets taken to a planetarium on a school field trip. Sixty-some years later he is standing in a school gym in the San Juan Mountains running a planetarium for somebody else’s kids. I do not think you can plan a life to come out that neatly. But it is a good thing to think about while you are standing in the cold on top of a pass looking at Saturn.

If you cannot make Star Fest, you have not missed your chance at the sky. Virden runs free stargazing sessions at Windy Point through the summer, usually starting around 8:30 in the evening and going a couple of hours. Windy Point is off 149 south of town on County Road 5A. Same advice applies — layers, a chair, a blanket, a thermos, headlights down. The sessions are free and donations go to the Lake Fork Valley Conservancy. The night of the week has moved around over the years so look it up before you drive out there.

There is also Astro-art over at Lake City Arts during the festival, and talks, and workshops, and enough going on that you can fill a whole weekend without trying.

One last thing worth knowing. Slumgullion Pass is named for the earthflow that came down off it, and that same landslide is what dammed the river and made Lake San Cristobal about seven hundred years ago. So the ground you are standing on to look at the stars is the same event that made the lake you swam in that afternoon. I find that satisfying in a way I cannot fully justify.

Also… clouds happen. This is the mountains in June. If the sky closes up, go to the movie.

You do not need me to explain the Fourth of July to you. You have been to a parade. You know how they work. So I want to be specific about what is different here: participation rate is 100%, it is an all-day festivus, it is like celebrating Christmas in Whoville.

In most places a parade is a thing you watch. Here it is a thing you are in. Half the town is driving something down the street, and the other half is standing on the curb cheering. I personally prefer to participate in a vehicle. So, we dress up the Bushwagon, my 1982 Jeep Wagoneer, and load it with kids to hurl candy and toys with no real clear strategy. The parade sets off at 10:00 in the morning. Get your spot before then. Also, at least my car tends to be unable to save anything long enough to get to the end. So, if you really want candy, you want to camp on the south side of town.

At some point after the parade the Air Force flies over. Obviously this is awesome. After the parade there is a reading of the Declaration of Independence at the Hinsdale County Museum. I am not much of a reader. So, it is nice to be read to.

Then everybody walks over to Town Park at Third and Silver, and from about 11:00 until 3:00 the games run. There is a foot race. There is a sack race. There is an egg toss. And there is the shoe kick. The best strategy is to be in an age group that only has three participants. Then you win every time. Also, you are probably not as young as you think you are and should stretch first, even for the egg toss.

I have done deep analysis on the shoe kicking. First off, it is dangerous to be in the audience. Second, do not kick the shoe straight up. This is a common mistake. Third, I think the hiking boot might be the most effective shoe. Fourth, as with all the events, style is extremely important.

At 3:00: Ducky Derby. Billions of rubber ducks get dumped into Henson Creek up by the ice park and they float down through town to the gazebo at Memorial Park. A duck is $5, or five of them for $20, and you can buy them at the Visitor Center or the Country Store or from a table in the park that day. First place pays $500. Second pays $250, third pays $125, last place pays $50.

At 4:00 there is BINGO in the park, which will feel familiar if you have already done BINGO at the Armory with us.

A few practical things. This is the busiest day of the year in Lake City by a wide margin, so if you are coming for it, book your lodging early — and I mean months, not weeks. Parking around the park fills up, but the town is small enough that parking four blocks away is not a real hardship. There are restrooms and water at the park. And no dogs are allowed in Town Park, which catches people out every year, so make a plan for your furry friends.

Come for the whole day. It is worth it.

An open mic night in a town of 400 people should not work. There are not enough people. That is just arithmetic. You need a pool of performers willing to get up in front of strangers, and a pool of strangers willing to sit and watch them, and Lake City does not really have either one — everybody in that room knows everybody else in that room, which is the opposite of the conditions an open mic is supposed to require.

It works anyway. It works better than it has any right to. Partly because of local talent and partly due to seasonal or incidental talent.

A few times each summer the letter board on the Lake City Arts building reads OPEN MIC. Lake City Arts is in the old brick building that went up in 1880 as an annex to the Hinsdale County Courthouse. It was built for public affairs during the mining boom, back when this town was still convinced it was going to be the metropolis of the San Juans. It was not. The building stayed anyway, doing county paperwork for most of a century, until volunteers started fixing it up in the nineties and putting art shows in it. Now it has a proper theater, the Mary Stigall, and a gallery in the front corner, and the Hinsdale County Museum is a block away. Silver Street is quietly doing the cultural heavy lifting for the entire county.

The format is exactly what it sounds like — you sign up at the door and you perform whatever you want. Music, comedy, poetry, a story. Somebody plays an acoustic guitar. Somebody reads something they wrote. The best thing about a small-town open mic is that the smallness is not the weakness. It is the whole point. Everybody participates, supports, and enjoys. It is a delight and has been a great way for our daughters to risk more than they normally would.

Open mic is not the only thing they run, and the summer calendar is better than it has any business being. There is an annual musical revue with performers going all out. Professional chamber music comes through in late July, and the musicians who play it also run a week-long violin intensive for students that ends with free public concerts anyone can walk into. There are art classes, kids’ programs, Art Walks on Silver Street when a new show opens in the gallery, and the Arts & Crafts Festival over in Town Park in mid-July, which has been running for close to fifty years. Check the calendar before you come. Dates move around year to year, so check your dates.

There are five fourteeners you can get to from Lake City (four of which are reasonable for any age), which is more than almost any town in Colorado can say. Redcloud sits about seven miles southwest of us at 14,034 feet and Sunshine is another mile south of it at 14,001. You can bag both in about 11.4 miles. They are joined by a ridge about a mile and a half long. So you climb the first one, walk the ridge, and the second summit is just sitting there waiting for you. Two fourteeners in one outing. That is the whole appeal and it is a good one. Redcloud got its name in 1906 — before that it was just Red Mountain, because the rock genuinely is rust red, full of iron, and on the right morning the whole peak looks like it is glowing.

Sunshine has the better story though. For most of my life it has been famous as the lowest fourteener in Colorado, number 53 out of 53, hanging on to the club by exactly one foot. It also barely clears the other requirement — a peak has to rise 300 feet above the saddle connecting it to its neighbor to count as its own mountain, and Sunshine rises 501. So for years there was this low hum of anxiety around it. Every time somebody talked about remeasuring the fourteeners with better equipment, the assumption was that poor Sunshine was going to get demoted and Colorado would quietly go down to 52. It did not help that nobody could even agree what to call it — it was Niagara Peak for a while, then Sherman Mountain, and the survey crews that came through in 1874 could not figure out where either name came from so they threw both out and went with Sunshine.

Then in 2024 they actually did remeasure it. NOAA came out with modern gear and Sunshine came back at 14,004.5 feet. Not only did it keep its spot, it moved UP the list. Our little embarrassment of a fourteener got a promotion.

Getting there is most of the commitment. From town go south on Hwy 149 about two miles and take a right onto County Road 30, the road toward Lake San Cristobal and Cinnamon Pass. You will be on pavement for the first four miles or so along the lake — the same water we have sent you to fish and swim in — and then it turns to dirt and stays that way. Stay right at the fork around mile twelve to get on the Alpine Loop. Somewhere around mile thirteen the road turns into a shelf cut into the south side of Sunshine Peak, which is exactly as narrow as that sounds. All told it is about eighteen miles from Lake City to the Silver Creek – Grizzly Gulch Trailhead and you should budget an hour to drive it. In dry conditions a high clearance two wheel drive will usually make it. I would take four wheel drive. There is a real parking lot up there and a vault toilet, and on a July Saturday that lot is full before sunrise.

The trail itself is Class 2 the whole way, which means it is hiking with some steep loose sections and no climbing. From the trailhead at 10,400 feet you head northeast up through the trees, pop out of the forest around 11,100, and follow Silver Creek up the drainage. Near 12,000 the world opens up. The trail curves right into the basin under Redcloud and switchbacks up to a saddle at about 13,000 feet, and from there you take the northeast ridge to the top. Then it is down and along the ridge to Sunshine, and then — and this is the part people try to talk themselves out of — back up and over Redcloud again to go home. There is what looks like a perfectly reasonable shortcut down from the saddle between the two peaks. It is not. It is steep and loose and full of ugly talus and the people who maintain this trail specifically ask you not to use it. Eat a sandwich on top of Redcloud the second time and enjoy the view twice. I told the boys they could count this as three fourteeners (fuzzy math).

The other reason to stay on the trail is the butterfly, and this is a genuinely remarkable thing about our county that most visitors never hear. The Uncompahgre fritillary has the smallest range of any butterfly in North America. It was discovered in 1978 on Uncompahgre Peak, right here in Hinsdale County, it lives above 13,200 feet on cool damp slopes, and it depends entirely on patches of snow willow — a tiny ground-hugging shrub — to feed its caterpillars. It went on the endangered list in 1991 when there were two known colonies left in the world. There are eleven now. Some of them are on Redcloud. That is why the Silver Creek route is the recommended one and why the Colorado Fourteeners Initiative and the BLM keep putting timber steps and boardwalk and tundra beds into that trail. It is not a rule made up to inconvenience you. Cutting a switchback up there costs something that took ten thousand years to grow and that exists in one small handful of places on the planet. We saw some orange flags up this season which makes me think they were surveying them.

The safety piece is short and it is the same for every high peak around here. July/August is our monsoon and the storms build fast in the afternoon, so the rule is be off the summits by noon. That means leaving Lake City at first light, five or six in the morning, which means you are driving that shelf road in the dawn light, which means you should be careful. There is no cell service on the Alpine Loop at all, so tell somebody your plan and fill up on gas in town before you go. Bring more water than you think and a rain shell you can actually get to. July through September is the reliable window — there can still be snow up high well into June, and by late September you will find it again above 13,000 feet. Personally, I love to get out there in June and October also but you need to check conditions.

My kids can handle this but I would strongly suggest you start with Handies. I will post that one soon. It is a MUCH shorter hike. If your kids survive that one, Redcloud (and maybe Sunshine) are a good next round. You can actually hike Handies from the same parking lot but most opt to start at American Basin.

Also… the lake is right there on the drive home. After 11 miles and 4,700 feet, a cold plunge in Lake San Cristobal is medicine.