On the top of the world

A trip in the San Juans from The Santa Fe New Mexican:

Driving the vertigo-inducing “Million-Dollar Highway” between Ouray and Silverton in southwestern Colorado, one might spot the small shrine dedicated to the modern snowplow drivers who have been swept off the highway and to their deaths. The road is often shut down for days when tons of snow rip off the high peaks above the road and thunder down into the river canyon beyond the shoulder, which has no guardrail because the slides tear it out year after year.

This is the land of Big Snow — 400 inches a year on average and close to 2 feet in a single day — and some of the most avalanche-prone terrain in the United States.

Red Mountain is just off this highway — U.S. 550 on a leg of the so-called San Juan Skyway — just north of Silverton in the heart of the rugged San Juan mountain range. The greatest concentration of 13,000- and 14,000-foot-plus peaks in North America, including 14 towering above 14,000 feet and close to 300 above 13,000 feet. Known as “The Rooftop of the Continent,” the range is the realm of beautiful, cool, rain-fed summers — and intense winters.

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