Ophir Pass Trail

The Ophir Pass Trail is one of the popular high mountain 4WD roads in the Telluride area in southwest Colorado. Ophir is a small mountain hamlet a few miles east of Highway 145, north of Lizard Head Pass and south of Telluride.

I started hiking at the beginning of the rough mountain road just past the end of the second group of the side by side mountain houses in Ophir. The lower part of the road passes through thick forest of Aspens, firs and spruces. The Ophir area has many signs of past mining activity. From this starting point it is about 3 miles to the top of Ophir pass with an elevation gain from about 9760 feet to 11,789 feet at the pass.

The trail is single lane with some wide spots to allow vehicles to pass. The main mountains to the south are called Ulysses S. Grant Peak and South Lookout Mountain, both over 13,000 feet. The Yellow Mountain group that is visible from Lizard Head Pass is also visible as are the two 14er Wilsons and the Lizard Head is in the distance. There is a swampy area down below that has a side trail leading to it.

About 20 vehicles passed by during my hike. Most were coming from the east with a few climbing from the west behind me. In the scree area near the pass I saw a couple of the small rabbit like Pikas that mountain hikers like to see. In late June there were patches of snow along the highest section of the route, but the road was clear and mostly dry.

On the north side I could see the track of the very steep Blixt Trail switch backing over the top of Oscar’s Pass. The Blixt Trail is an unmarked side trail off of the Ophir Pass Trail starting about 1.5 miles east of the start of the mountain road. It connects to the Wasatch Trail and then down into Telluride.

The spectacular scenery continues on the east side of Ophir Pass. It looked like the east side approach from Highway 550 near Silverton was more easily drivable that the west side approach. It took me 2:00 hours to climb the 3 miles and 2000 feet from Ophir to the top of the pass. My total hike was 3:45 hours for the 6 miles. I hiked on a 55 F late June morning. As often happens in the mountains, the bright blue morning sky started to cloud up into afternoon thundershowers starting just as I finished about 1:00 PM. I carried 3 liters of water and drank 2 of them.

Blixt Trail toward Oscar’s Pass-Ophir

The Blixt Trail starts as a side road off of the Ophir Pass Road in southwest Colorado. Ophir is a mountain hamlet in a scenic canyon south of Telluride and east off of Highway 145. The Ophir Pass Road is one of many spectacular high mountain 4WD routes in the Telluride area.

The Ophir Canyon has many obvious signs of past mining activity. I started my hike just past the last group of houses in Ophir where the Ophir Pass Road starts to get rough and the elevation is about 9800 feet. About 1.5 miles further along the road, the second of two side roads on the left leads uphill for 0.4 miles or so to a green gate. The gate ends all motorized travel.

There aren’t any signs that advertize the trail. A good map is advisable. The trail past the gate is the remains of an old road that leads steeply uphill to Oscar’s Pass and the Bridal Veil Basin. The trail is eroded in places and the surface is mostly large gravel. The steepness and the gravel combine to make the descent the type where my feet start to skid and slip out from under me. I hiked the first 1.5 miles to the turnoff but it is drivable in a high clearance vehicle.

As the trail climbs, there are higher and higher views up and down the Ophir Canyon, including high angle views of the Ophir Pass Road. The pass road is also a good hike, easier than this one. The road appears to be very narrow and the traffic I could see was moving very slowly. There seemed to always be a vehicle in sight, sometimes several.

Back to the west there were views down into Ophir and the mountains beyond. The Lizard Head was visible in the distance. On the way into Ophir, there are rock climbing opportunities. I saw a mountain school van stopped by the Ophir Needles, near the junction with Highway 145. There is also a somewhat comical closet sized Post Office along the way.

I didn’t make it to the top of Oscar’s Pass. I hiked for 2:20 hours and got to a point a couple of hundred yards short of the final switchbacks. I think I got as high as 12,500 feet but needed about another 1 mile of walking and 600 more feet of elevation to get to the top. There are two lakes in the basin above including Blue Lake that can also be reached from the top of Bridal Veil Falls east of Telluride.

There isn’t very much posted on-line about the Blixt Trail. I found a short report with some short videos posted by an Ultra-Marathoner. I suppose this was an easy hike for him, but the relentless steepness was too much for me. His hike was in early July and there were still large patches of snow in the highest area. I didn’t see any snow above in mid August.

About 0.5 miles below my turn around there was an apparent trail junction, with a westward leading trail crossing a scree area. The map I had made it appear that this route would loop back down to Ophir. I crossed the scree area, with good views to the area where I had just hiked, but this route started to climb again, and I didn’t want to do any more climbing. I returned by retracing the route up.

My total hike was 4:30 hours for about 7.5 miles. The temperature was about 60 F degrees at 10:00 AM. It felt cooler and there was some wind at my highest point 2 hours later. It was a blue sky day with no thunder clouds. I carried 3 liters of water.

On the way to Ophir I saw two moose with antlers cross Highway 145 from west to east a little south of the Matterhorn Campground. Several cars slowed to let them cross and they hurriedly and awkwardly dived into the brush. These were first moose I’ve spotted in this area.