Continued from Durango Day 2.

Hand rail at our cabin. At first I thought those were all worm drilled tunnels, but I think it’s actually just part of the crevices of the bark when the raised portioned gets shaved down smooth.

The plan today is to cross over the mountain via Engineer Pass. And now that I’m doing some research about it, it’s confusing but there are actually two different Engineer Mountains in the area, and the one we saw driving yesterday isn’t actually the one we are crossing over.

Got a long day of driving ahead of us, started loading up as early as we could and let’s hit the road. It’s just a little bit after 8am when we left our cabin. Good thing we got a giant car because we certain are using all the space.

Heading North deeper into the San Juan Mountains.

Engineer Mountain, here we go.

Engineer Mountain ahead, but no, that’s not the Engineer Mountain that we are going over. We are going through the other Engineer Mountain just a little bit more up the road, yeah, very confusing.

Lots and lots of overlanders here. Thought I’d see a few more Defenders out here, but hasn’t been the case.

We are over 10,000 feet up.

Kids are ready for their off road adventure today. So am I. I’m a little nervous and a little excited.

Scenery is absolutely stunning over here. Every turn we go around, I just want to take more pictures.

Wow.

Really hard to see, but I believe that’s one of the red mountain just barely peeking out in the distance.

There’s Silverton ahead down the valley.

Now we go downhill towards Silverton.

Love the red soil in these mountains next to the green vegetation.

Here’s Silverton, one of the gateway towns into the Alpine Loop. There’s another way to the loop through Ouray, but it seems like there’s an offroad portion there’s quite a bit more challenging than coming from Silverton. 3 kids and wife in the car, no reason to take more chances at getting stuck or whatnot offroading.

Found the gas station in town, filled up and ready to go. Love how the red in the car pops in direct sunlight. I love car.

Soon after leaving Silverton, the pavement stopped. Lots of ATVs out here.

Time to air down the tires. Factory pressure calls for 50, I lowered them down to 37ish. Nothing drastic, just to give it a little more cushion.

Old mining gondolas.

Just pretty smooth dirt road for now.

Very dusty whenever we let an ATV pass by us and they kick up dust in the road. They have such nice offroad suspension, they are passing by all the cars.

OK, starting to climb now. The road got narrower and a little bit more rocky.

We saw that giant white thing above the water and was like, what’s that?

Upon closer inspection, we determined that it’s a giant block of ice that hasn’t quite fully melted yet. Wow.

Beautiful waterfalls along the trail.

Another giant unmelted ice cap. I can’t believe there’s still this much ice at the lower altitudes of the mountain in August. The temperature isn’t super cold, we are still feeling comfortable in short sleeves.

Now a little bit more rocky on the road. Still not too bad though.

Rockier still.

Found a stopping spot close to the creek so the kids can check it out.

My love.

Chilly icy water.

Looking good.

It’s always funny to come up an off road trail and see some beat up sedan with no ground clearance making it up as well. But so far, the trails haven’t been challenging at all, just a little rocky and bumpy at times.

Oh, what’s this? I looked it up and believe it’s an Marmot.

We passed by this Subaru Outback ahead of us. They were going a little slow and may not be able to go much farther ahead as the roads get much rockier.

Split to the right, the road immediately gets steeper, rockier, and narrower.

11,000 feet now. It feels a lot steeper than 7 degrees. Got the rear lockers fully locked now.

Concentrate.

I think this is where some of the lower clearance vehicles would start having trouble.

Really grateful for the BFG K02 tires that we have on now. There are some pretty sharp pointy rocks out here. Would have been really worried about a puncture with the factory soft offroad tires, but very confident in these new tires.

So pretty.

Now for some switch backs. Hard to see, but these are some of the steeper and more technical sections on the trail. Would definitely need an off-road vehicle to make it up some of these rock steps.

I think I was checking coolant level here. It was my big worry during the whole trip with the car. The Defender had an engine recall when new, and when the dealership did the recall, they did not correctly place all the hose clamps. Of course, one coolant hose blew off during a trip coming home from out of town and we were stranded hours from home and had to be towed back. That problem has since been fixed, but I’ve been checking the coolant level periodically since then. We started out the trip with the coolant a little bit overfilled, and it’s been dropping down a little. I am guessing it’s just evaporating off the pressure relief since it was overfilled slightly. As long as it doesn’t get lower than the max fill line and drastically increase in dropping, I won’t worry about it…too much.

Another fork, and the going gets harder still yet.

Such a beautiful view. The slant in the photo shows the incline that we are on.

Would not recommend if you are scared of heights. Speaking of which, RL was pretty brave lower below, but by this portion she was starting to get scared of the height and going over these giant bumps in the road. She was not having a good time by now. It’s 11am now, so we’ve been on the road for almost 3 hours already. Did not feel like we’ve been driving for so long, but I’m quite enjoying the challenge of this drive.

This switch back turned out to be the toughest section on the whole drive. It had a pretty steep drop off, the Tacoma had to be guided down. Honestly, I think if the driver had a little bit more experience, he could have gotten it down himself without too much trouble.

There we go, now it’s my turn to go up the steep rocky section. It’ll be a little trickier since we are going up hill but the Defender locked up the wheels and we got up there just fine. Oh yeah. I can see this section being quite tricky if it’s wet though.

RL not enjoying the off roading now at all. We are way high up in the mountain, narrow road always watching for traffic coming the other way and bouncing up and down on the rocky road. She likened the experience to being on a boat during rough seas, but all that pitching and rolling was right on the edge of a bad drop.

Plenty more ice up here.

I’m glad RL is on the mountain side and not the drop off side of the car. The kids seem unfazed by the height though.

Such a cool view from up here.

There are some passing bubbles, but I can see it being a tight fit for two full sized cars. Good thing those ATV are much narrower.

Just a few more turns, and we’ll be at the peak.

Made it to the top!

There’s even an offshoot to a viewing area with ample parking.

Pretty awesome.

Look at that, coolant level still above max, nice. I am guessing some of the extra coolant evaporated out due to the lower boiling point at this high altitude.

So cool.

At the peak, it was very windy and chilly, no one but me wanted to get out of the car for long. This is the only picture I have of the kids on top, showing them how the lower pressure up here caused the chip bag to balloon up.

Again, so cool.

To be continued at Pagosa Springs Part 2.