For purposes of this website, “backcountry” refers to any location NOT accessible by a paved highway; that means a range of easy to difficult roads, from graded gravel roads suitable for most any vehicle to steep, challenging rocky “trails” requiring high clearance, short wheelbase, 4-wheel drive vehicles. Many of the rugged but highly scenic off-road opportunities evolved from Colorado’s mining history in the 1800’s. Miners created these rough paths to transport ore to towns. Similarly, narrow-gauge railroad lines were built for the same reason. With tracks considerably closer together, these trains could navigate tighter turns in mountainous terrains. (See the Durango & Silverton Railroad gallery).
Ouray, Colorado has been our base for all of our off-road excursions except for three: one out of Marble, Colorado and the other two out of Crested Butte. I will use markers on the Map to describe the general locations of each trail we navigated.
