After spending much of the day exploring five campgrounds north of Durango, we reached the
former mining town of Silverton late in the afternoon.
We took a few minutes to reacquaint ourselves with the town and enjoy some delicious barbecue.
Our final stop was to restock groceries before heading west in search of a campsite for the
night.
Traveling a couple of miles on US 550 and four miles west on forest road 585, we arrived
at South Mineral Campground.
Directly across the road from the campground is the Ice Lakes Trailhead.
This trail is 3.79 miles with 2400 feet of elevation gain and leads to one of Colorado's
most beautiful settings.
A few weeks after our visit the Ice Lakes Fire burned 596 acres on this side of the
road.
No word on when the trail may reopen.
We were shocked by some of the details the camp host told us about the 400 to 600 daily
hikers that visited this trail during the summer of 2020.
Cars filled the parking lot and lined both sides of the road for over a mile.
Sometimes not leaving enough of an opening for campers to drive their RVs through.
Besides going off-trail and damaging the fragile alpine tundra, the record number of hikers
also left trash and human waste behind.
Some chose to remove wood from historic mining structures to fuel campfires around the lake.
It is very likely that the Ice Lakes Trail will require a permit system similar to what
is in place at Hanging Lake near Glenwood Springs and the Maroon Bells outside of Aspen.
In the comments, I'll include a link to a recent Denver Post article about the problems.
I'm also including a link to the Leave No Trace Center for Outdoor Ethics.
If you are new to the outdoors please check out their site.
All right let's go find a campsite and set up camp before sunset.
Campground host in front.
Campsite number one
on the left
It's not too shabby.
Site two on the right
It's got a lot of parking including the pull-through.
Campsite three
on the left
All right number four on the right
Number five will be on the right.
That's a deep one.
Truck and a camper and they still got plenty of parking.
Yeah, it's cool over here.
There's the creek on the right
Site six was in the open in the center of the loop
Number seven on our left
Great views of the creek right here
Right in front of us
I wonder if there's like a trailhead parking or something or fisherman parking
Yeah, there's creek access down there.
A lot of creek access
All right we'll come back and catch the stuff on that road in a minute.
So this is site number 16.
It's got water here in the campsite.
What do you like so far 16 or number one?
17 on the right 18 on the right somebody has that one
19 on the left
This is a nice one
This one's a little closer to the restroom in case you need to go in the middle of the
night
Site 20 is the pull-off on the right.
Yeah, pull through.
21 is on the left.
That's nice
I think somebody just took site number one
Yeah, somebody just grabbed it.
There's a couple options
Even 22 here.
22 on the right
I'll be fine with that one as well.
23
on the right.
Water on the right.
24.
That's a big rooftop tent
Never seen that brand before.
25 is in the open
26 on the right that's a pull through
We've got number 27
also going to be on the right by the restrooms.
Do you want the one behind the camp host or do you want to go back to 19.
19.
Driving the wrong way here
The road to get here isn't bad but we did come across a slide off on our way down to
the highway the next morning.
Several dispersed camping areas with restrooms are on the road to South Mineral Campground.
We'll have a separate video of the Kendall, Sultan and Anvil dispersed areas coming up
in another week or two.
South Mineral Campground is first-come, first-served.
Open from mid-May through mid-September.
Max RV length is 35 feet.
30 dollars
So here's a little loop
off the main road through the campground.
There's only one campsite down here.
Site number 15.
Our regular viewers might remember our video from several months ago about Wolf'em Sticks.
During our summer camping trip at Trapper's Lake the campground hosts introduced us to
Amish peasels.
We found these Wolf'em Sticks at on Amazon which are pretty much the same thing
Using a biscuit you form a mini bowl around the end and fill it with your desired ingredients
after cooking over your campfire.
We used vanilla pudding in place of the traditional bavarian cream, added strawberry pie filling,
and topped with whipped cream
There you go.
Yum!!
We really enjoyed our stay here at South Mineral Campground.
It was a weekday in September so we didn't have to worry about the crowds at the trailhead.
I think it would be too crowded for me to stay here in the summertime unless the forest
service goes ahead with the plans for a permit system on the Ice Lakes Trail
Let's take a drive through the loop where site 15 is located and then we'll end the
video with two minutes of footage from several vantage points along South Mineral Creek.
As always we look forward to your comments.
Let us know what you think of this one.