Colorado Winters : Sawpit, Telluride, Gunnison
Earlier in the year we enjoyed a much longer trip through Colorado that included a variety of mishaps and weather conditions. One particularly unpleasant experience was locking ourselves out of a rental car on the side of a mountain near Telluride, which required us breaking the window. The broken window lead us to Montrose, Colorado for a repair and eventually the surrounding Gunnison area.
What followed was an introduction into not being properly prepared for the full onslaught of a Colorado winter.
Our first stop was San Miguel county where we split our time between Telluride and Sawpit. We cut our time short in Sawpit after finding some odd impromptu shelters near our dispersed campsite.
After our usual fun on Last Dollar Road, we needed to get our car window repaired. The nearest shop available was out in Montrose, Colorado about 70 miles away. So, we packed up and found a campsite out of town in the Black Canyon of the Gunnison National Park.
As you can tell by our three season tent, we weren’t exactly well prepared for the snowstorm that came in over night. We slept through it the first night well enough, but by the second night the ground had frozen beneath us and it was impossible to stay warm. I woke up with mild hypothermia and spent the rest of the night in the car trying to stay warm.
Despite how brutally cold it was, the wintery landscape was certainly beautiful.
