Hope Lake Trail near Trout Lake

The Hope Lake Trail is a spur off the Galloping Goose Trail near Trout Lake between Lizard Head Pass and Telluride in southwest Colorado. It climbs through lush spruce and fir forest, toward the reddish Vermillion Peak and finds Hope Lake in a glacial basin. The spur road is near the old railroad trestle east of Trout Lake, east of Highway 145.

 I started on the forest service road that leads to the trailhead. It was steep uphill and it took me an hour to get to the actual trail head. From where I started, the elevation is about 10,000 feet. The actual trailhead is at 10,800 feet and Hope Lake is at 12,000 feet. A hiking couple along the Goose Trail made a point of telling me I could drive there and seemed stunned that I was going to walk, but it made for a good long and scenic hike.

The trail head sign said 3.5 miles to Hope Lake and it was also fairly steep uphill, lots of switch backs, with several creek crossings, and great views of the surrounding San Miguel range of mountains.

The meadow areas were rich with wildflowers, shoulder high larkspurs and Queen Anne's lace, lots of columbines, buttercups, Indian Paint Brushes and others.
 

The views back down toward Trout Lake were particularly spectacular, cars and travel trailers lumbering up the highway beyond the lake. But as I got closer to my goal, the ominous sound of thunder rumbled overhead. Both Hope Lake and Trout Lake provide the water pressure for the historic Ames Power plant.
 

I must have spent a full minute admiring the lake, well above the tree line, rocky and austere. Then a bolt crackled across the sky and rain began pelting down. I had a two hour power walk back to my car facing me, but luckily the rain was only guarding the high peaks.

On the way down, I passed two women and a young girl who were picking up some rocks to carry home. I asked if they were finding fossils, but they replied that it was the heart shaped rocks they were after.

Galloping Goose Trail-Trout Lake to Ames

The Galloping Goose Trail in the San Juan Mountains in southwest Colorado runs about 21 miles and follows the old rail bed of an historic train that served the area until the early 1950s.

From the scenic Lizard Head Pass the trail runs north to Trout Lake, then to Ophir, past Ames, along the south fork of the San Miguel river and connects to the Telluride Bike Trail and the Valley Floor River Trail that go into Telluride.
I started this segment at Trout Lake, that Shangri-La spot nestled below Vermillion Peak and Yellow Mountain. The trail is as wide as a road until it gets to the Matterhorn campground area, then has different segments of narrow trails and gravel roads as it gets close to the Ophir area, a historic mining town.

There are views of the San Miguel range of mountains all around. The forest here is mostly Aspen and Englemann Spruce.

The Ophir Needles is one of the outstanding views along here. After crossing the highway through a tunnel, there is a mining reclamation project to view that was completed in 2000-01. Old piles of mine tailings from the area mines have been stabilized.
The trail goes above the village of Ames which is famous as the site of the first hydro alternating current power plant in history, an obscure place for an important development.

There was a technology battle between Nikolas Tesla's AC and Thomas Edison's DC and it was here that the winner was determined. Along the trail you can see parts of the large pipe that runs from Trout Lake and Hope Lake to power the plant.

I hiked on this segment for about 1:45 hours before being turned back by rain. My total hike was about 3:30 hours. The distance from Lizard head to the tunnel under Highway 145 is about 11.5 miles.