On the Rise

With new hotels, climbing routes, and biking trails, Colorado's low-key, high-elevation Western Slope is ripe for adventure

- DARRELL HARTMAN

I AM SCALING 1,000 vertical feet of purple sandstone in Colorado's Sneffels Range and, despite being a nonclimber, feeling weirdly relaxed about it. The steep route is laced with a via ferrata-the system, invented in the Dolomites, of metal handholds, footholds, and cables that climbers can clip into and follow all the way up. "Nose over toes," my guide instructs-in other words, not pressed up against the rocky slope, as anxious greenhorns often are. Near the top we scuttle through an old mining tunnel and traverse a 230-foot-long cable bridge before stopping to take in the scenery below: the 922-person town of Ouray, cozily enveloped in mountain peaks, and the butterscotch-colored Uncompahgre River.

This was exactly the kind of adventure I was seeking in Colorado's Western Slope. My visit to this region was targeted: I'd focus on the higher-elevation 70-mile stretch that runs between Durango and Ouray, one of the best (and still somewhat off-the-radar) outdoor recreation corridors in America. Diehards descend in the winter for ice climbing and backcountry skiing. In the summer, more casually outdoorsy types like me come for hiking, gravel biking, jeep touring, fly-fishing, and cable-assisted climbing and for the solitude that's become harder to find in Colorado's more accessible mountain towns since the COVID-era outdoors boom. The nearest big-name resort to this rugged part of the Western Slope is Telluride, an hour or so away even in the best travel conditions.

No one else was scaling the two-year-old Gold Mountain Via Ferrata my first morning in Ouray. After getting a ride down from the top, I headed to another of the town's new additions: the Western Hotel, where the stripped-down Old West decor had everything I'd hoped for (bearskin rugs, leather-upholstered headboards, freestanding tubs, exposed ceiling beams) and none of the Victorian overkill of many of the area's other historic hotels.