Tincup Pass
We met up at the gas station in Johnson Village. The fog was lifting after some morning haze and it looked promising. It looked to be a great Indian Summer day with lots of sunshine and blue skies.
There was some traffic as we started out near the town of St. Elmo, so we expected that there were going to be a lot of people on Tincup Pass. The colors on the aspen trees at the parking lot where we aired down were beautiful and golden, and we hoped we would see some beautiful, golden colors along the trail, too. Fall was on its way!
As we made our way up to Tincup Pass, we did occasionally have to go to the side of the trail to let side-by-sides pass us. There were only a few groups of side-by-sides -- less than we thought were making their way up Tincup Pass.
Most of the trail was just very rocky and bumpy. That make the drive pretty slow but gorgeous.
We stopped for lunch just before the top of Tincup Pass on a hill with a great view in all directions. After lunch, we continued to the top of Tincup Pass and stopped to take some pictures.
Soon, we made it to the intersection of Old Tincup Pass. We stayed on the main trail, though because we did not see the turn in time. It still was very fun on the main trail, as there were a few different lines that we could take.
When we got to Mirror Lake, we saw that the forest service had done a lot of work to the trail going along the side of the water. They made the trail higher and closed all the lake crossing areas so that you cannot drive into or through the lake anymore. The only water crossing by Mirror Lake is the small creek crossing.
We stopped in the parking area by the lake to take a short break and some more pictures, and the sunshine hit the water just right.
After Mirror Lake, we continued on to the old, small town of Tincup and stopped there to air back up. Then we drove over Cottonwood Pass back to Buena Vista. Cottonwood Pass is all paved now. It was the perfect Fall day.
Reports from Other Days: 4
Use the arrows or dots to flip through the previews of the other reports for Tincup Pass. Click one of them to read more and see all of the photos from that day.
