Blue Lakes from Yankee Boy Basin
Similar to Ice Lakes Basin, Blue Lakes is another of the renowned day hikes in Southwest Colorado. We have done the blue lakes hike from the main trailhead off of the Dallas Divide several times. It is a wonderful hike. The last time we did that trail, we had the idea to hike it in the future from the other direction, starting in Yankee Boy Basin and over Blue Lakes Pass. Four years later, we finally got around to doing this hike, and it was every bit as good as we had imagined.
The drive to in Yankee Boy Basin is a great experience in and of itself. The road from Ouray passes by the Camp Bird Mine and then continues on an exposed forest service road to the basin. At one part, you drive under a cliff overhang, which I captured in one of the photos at the bottom of the page. There is a lower and upper trailhead in Yankee Boy Basin. We parked at the lower trailhead, and hiked on the road to the upper trailhead and then on the approach trail for the Mount Sneffels climb. After the turn off to Sneffels, the trail continues to on Blue Lakes Pass. Yankee Boy is a wide open basin with views of Teakettle Peak, Cirque Peak,. Mount Gilpin and, of course, Mount Sneffels, which is the dominant peak and only fourteener in this group. Yankee Boy Basin is worth the trip even if you don’t continue on to Blue Lakes or Mount Sneffels.
After the pass, we continued down the switchbacks to Upper and Middle Blue Lakes. One of the great things about the Yanklee Boy approach is that it is closer to these upper lakes, so the crowds coming from the traditional Blue Lakes trailhead hadn’t yet reached the upper basin when we were there. The view of Dallas Peak across the basin is phenomenal. We made our way to the Lower Lake overlook. The Lower Lake is the most famous of the three Blue Lakes, owing to its beautiful bright turquoise color.
After enjoying our lunch at the overlook, we returned the way we came to Yankee Boy Basin. On the way back through the basin, we stopped at Wrights Lake and followed along Sneffels Creek back to the trailhead.
This hike was a great experience and was, in my opinion, an upgrade on the standard Blue Lakes Trail. The view from Blue Lakes Pass is one of the great vistas in the San Juans. Moreover, combining Yankee Boy Basin with Blue Lakes in a manageable day hike was a great two-for-one.
