Red Mountain Traverse
Despite having made at least fifteen trips to the San Juan Mountains, somehow the Red Mountain traverse had never made it on our hiking list. I was familiar with the hike to the third Red Mountain, which was a relatively short hike on a forest service road to a lookout, but the lack of adventure on that route didn’t appeal to me. In preparation for our trip to Ouray in June 2026, I came across a hiking blog describing an off-trail traverse along the Red Mountain ridge line to visit all three summits. This sounded more like our kind of hike.
We took the turnoff at Ironton Park off of US 550 (also known as The Million Dollar Highway), and started up the jeep road to Corkscrew Pass at 12,270 ft. There were several moderately tight switchbacks, but it the spectrum of Colorado jeep roads, this one was in fairly good condition. The views of the Red Mountains opened up as we approached the summit. There was a small tarn at the pass and a place to park.
We started west on the ridge line. It was all loose scree with sharp rocks. It was hard to maintain our elevation, as we slid down the slope with each step. Each mile felt like three. We reached the ridge junction and turned north toward the summit of Red Mountain 2. The ground was more solid in this section and the hiking a bit easier. The views looking down the ridge were epic. This was the most beautiful portion of the hike. We reached an overlook at the end of the ridge and then retraced our steps to the junction and started toward Red Mountain 3. After a frustrating quarter mile, with continuous sliding and several falls, we decided to turn back before reaching the third summit.
We made our way back to Corkcrew Pass, and then climbed 400 ft to the summit of Red Mountain 1. We hiked along this ridge line to its terminus. It was slightly different in color and shape compared to the second mountain ridge, but similarly beautiful. We ate a snack and enjoyed a few extra moments in this beautiful area. My wife can be seen in the distance at the top of Red Mountain 1 in one of the photos below.
This was an amazing experience. We spent over 5 hours in the Red Mountains and were the only people there all day. Accessing the hike via a rugged jeep road further added to our enjoyment of the day. The terrain in this area is some of the most colorful and dramatic in all of Colorado. There are only a handful of mountains like this in the world, such as Rainbow Mountain in Peru, which has hundreds of visitors each day. I have only seen photos of their Peurvian sister mountain, but I can’t imagine that it is any more striking than Colorado’s Red Mountains. The best part of the Red Mountain Traverse is that this hike doesn’t appear on many (or any?) trail apps and doesn’t seem to attract the same Instagram crowd seen at many other natural wonders. This hike is hard, and you need scrambling and navigating skills to do it, and some off-road driving skills to access the trail.
