My plan was to travel up Corkscrew Gulch and cross over Hurricane Pass to Lake Como before back-tracking to Velocity Basin and going to Silverton for lunch. As I headed up Corkscrew, it was obviously taking longer than normal. Road conditions were pretty bad due to damage from avalanches and heavy runoff from record snowfall last Winter. On top of that, traffic was especially heavy and some of the vehicles were moving slowly up the mountain.
Still, the scenery was delightful as ever, especially near the top of Red Mountain One looking across at Red Mountains Two and Three. Notice the 4WD trails near the bottom of the second photo.
At the high point of the trail, a permanent pool of snow melt and a view into surrounding valleys make for a good stop. It was here that a guy on a dirt bike warned me about a group of twenty Jeeps up ahead. He also told me that snow was about 35 feet deep on either side of the road over Engineer Pass. I'd love to see that!
I soon caught up to the slow moving convoy of Jeeps. When they turned left toward Hurricane Pass, I chose to forego that part of the trip and turned right to visit Velocity Basin. It was already clear there wasn't enough time to do all I had planned without missing lunch.
The road to the basin has a couple streams to ford, but they aren't an issue and the rest of the road is good. The mountains that form the basin can be seen from far away.
There were more wildflowers in this area, although the late season prevented some from ever coming to fruition.
The basin has a nice lake that I normally walk around, but that wasn't going to happen this day. It was obvious the lake is still frozen over, since it was entirely covered with snow. The result of an avalanche, it appeared the snow on the lake was twelve or more feet deep.
Driving down the valley presented some additional views, and the remains of an old mine.
At the bottom, there is a water treatment facility built by the Environmental Protection Agency. In 2015, a contractor working for the EPA was attempting to access water contained within the Gold King Mine, locked behind an earthen plug. Before the mine shut down in 1923, the owner had plugged the opening to prevent drainage. Even before the mine, there was natural runoff of acidic water, but now the plug was leaking, so the EPA was trying to process the contaminated water from the mine. However, the water level was deeper than expected and under significant pressure. The result was a three million gallon spill of water containing heavy metals into Cement Creek. The water then flowed into the Animas River, the San Juan River and Lake Powell, affecting four states and the Navajo Nation.
By not immediately informing the states and their residents, the EPA simply compounded the error. They accepted responsibility for clean-up, but refused to compensate local governments or citizens for damages. Lawsuits are still on-going, but the EPA claims they have spent enough with the $2.9 million for clean-up. They never actually did anything downstream, as the heavy metals settled to the bottom, allowing the waterways to clear on their own.
Here is a photo of a colorful area alongside Cement Creek that looks worse than it really is. Most of it is simply iron oxide (rust) that occurs naturally. I've been going there since 2003 and it looked the same then. It may be "safe", but I wouldn't drink it.
After lunch, I drove home via Red Mountain Pass and saw numerous places where avalanches had flattened large sections of forest. I couldn't stop for photos of most of them, but did manage a shot of a small section of damage.
