2011 Ouray, CO - Day 5 "Minor" Hike

Day 5 - about the time in vacation when you are comfortable in your new location and really become part of the environment.  About the time in the trip when you either love your vacation or start thinking about going home.  I was definitely thinking about how I could pull off moving to Ouray, CO at this point in vacation.  For the first time on vacation we took the morning to sleep in and enjoy just being at the campground.  Due to a strange craving for pancakes (I hate breakfast which makes this strange) we decided to go to the cafe for a filling breakfast of pancakes, biscuits and gravy, eggs, and other breakfasty foods.  We headed back to our cabin to read and sit out on the porch for a few hours.

Around lunch time we decided to head into Ouray and try a "small hike" to the Upper Cascade Falls. ... We probably should have done some more research on this hike (or atleast brought more water) before setting out - our first clue of trouble should have been the fact that the map said it was 1. 7 miles to the falls.  We should have checked out the elevation chart to go with that also...looking back.  We decided to start the hike and just see what it was like - couldn't be that bad, we thought we saw the falls the other day so it must just be a hike around the edge of the mountain.  So off we go!  The first 1/4 mile or so was fairly flat trail, nothing to exciting.  We thought we were good.  We started worrying when we would get to the signs that told us how far we had gone - and we hadn't gone very far.  Worried even more when we passed people coming back down that looked exhausted - now these people had dogs and small children so they should look exhausted but we should have paid heed.
We started ascending the mountain and going through a series of switch backs (steep rocky ones with bad footing) - what looked like 4 on the map turned out to be about 10.  We contemplated turning around but decided we had to be close - people kept saying we were close.  We finally got to the top and were treated to a 1/2 mile hike around the edge of the mountain (that hike we anticipated at the beginning...).
I have to say when we got to the falls it was really pretty.  Because it required such a hike it was very serene and peaceful, not covered in annoying tourist like the lower falls.  We took pictures, we took our shoes off and dipped our feet in the stream (brrrr), we enjoyed a few minutes on top of the mountain.
Then we started the descent.  I don't mind climbing up things - mountains, rock slides, bunk beds - but going down is not my cup of tea.  I slid, I went slow, I fell - it was sad.  After what seemed like hours (who said going back was quicker????) we made it back to the start, looked at the map again and cursed ourselves for not paying more attention.  We hoped we didn't kill ourselves and hurt our chances of making it to the top of the 14er 2 days later.  Oh well atleast we got great pictures!

On the way home we picked up our Jeep for our next grand adventure to start the next day (thankfully we got white not burnt orange).  Once we got back we made a nice camp fire to roast hot dogs and we packed our hiking bags for our trip through the passes.