Ouray Via Ferrata

Have you ever done a Via Ferrata? If not, you totally should!  This side trip worked nicely into our weekend plans, but to be honest, I was a little worn out by this point.  Driving the entire weekend took longer than expected and due to some noisy dispersed campers I didn’t get a lot of sleep the night before.  We met the team at the Box Canyon Trailhead at 9am and hiked up to the staging area.

This was an unguided climb, but there was still someone at the entrance to make sure we had all the proper gear (closed toed shoes and helmet… looking at you Eric).  We’d stopped and rented lanyards but had our own harnesses and helmets. Important signage:

Eric went first to take pictures, and I went second.  The course started with a wire bridge (and ended with one too).

Then there was a lot of traversing, up and down and sideways.  We were clipped in the entire time, so no worries if we were to fall (we didn’t fall). Here are some pictures of the course

It’s a long way down

More route pictures

There’s a waterfall they use for ice climbing in the winter

Some fun shots…

And the rope bridge at the end

All in all it was a great day.  It ended a few hours later than it probably should have (the course took 4 hours instead of 1, due to the photo shoot) but I was still able to make it home by about 7pm.  To find out the new water heater was leaking gas.  Ha!  What a way to end the birthday celebration weekend.