Monday, July 20th, BULLION KING ATTEMPT, BLACK BEAR

Jane & Charles, Dale & Betty, Jim & I were going to one of our favorite places today, Bullion King.  We got to the start of the ledge by the "travel not recommended sign," only to encounter a new "Closed" sign.  Seeing hikers above, we wondered if they might have placed it there to discourage Jeeps since the ledge road is soooo narrow.  But, because it is so very narrow, we didn't want to have to make an almost impossible turn-around on the ledge so Jane and Charles decided to hike up and see what was going on and did find construction.  Appears they are blasting rocks and attempting to widen the road.  Charles later read that the government is closing the mine so I guess they will need to widen the road to make the mine accessible by larger vehicles.  The challenge was part of the fun.

 Jane & Jim contemplating what to do:

 Charles & Jane headed up to check it out:

 Here they come back down with the bad news:

Next stop, Black Bear!

Had to enjoy the flowers on this trail today, because

 there were FIVE semis full of sheep being dumped to graze this area.

Hundreds of sheep headed up the trail:

 Charles taking a panoramic:

 Still a fair amount of snow on this trail:

 Looking down on Telluride:

 You can see the landing strip of the Telluride airport:

 Weather moving in so we thought it best to turn around.

To continue into Telluride would involve returning on a different trail as 

Black Bear becomes one way.  It is also a very difficult trail made

much worse in wet conditions:

 Driving into the clouds:

 Clear on the other side; looking at Red Mountain in the sun:

 My favorite shot of the day:

And the only critters we saw (except for the sheep) were this hawk posing on a rock:

and lots of fat marmots: