Here are Terri and I on our honeymoon. Twenty-five years later, we decided to celebrate our anniversary by climbing Windom Peak in the San Juan range in Colorado.

 
 

Windom is the peak on the left in this Steve Hoffmeyer photo. The peak on the right is Sunlight.

 

We pack up from the Strater Hotel in Durango.

 
The Strater is a historic place, and not far from the train station.

 

Terri heads down the main drag in Durango, towards the Durango & Silverton Narrow Gauge Railroad.

 

We get ready for the train ride, about 4 hours if you go all the way to Silverton, about half that to get to the Needleton trailhead, where we would get off.

 

The DSNGRR is a coal-powered steam locomotive. Very cool, but a sooty experience if you sit in the open cars.

 

They call it Narrow Gauge for a reason.

 

I took this from the front to show the length of the train.

 

From the train you get great views of the Animas River below.

 

The tracks are so narrow that sometimes you can't see ground underneath, just have to trust 19th-century engineering.

 
We let off steam.

 

And fill up with water about an hour into the trip.

 

We started looking up as we neared the San Juan peaks.

 

As you approach the trailhead you can start to see the peaks near Chicago Basin. This is Pigeon Peak, almost but not quite a 14'er.

 

They kick the backpackers off here, then head off to Silverton.

 

We didn't know it at the time but would run into this young couple again, in a couple of days on Windom.

 

Here in the valley, she is still smiling.

 

A few miles, and a couple thousand vertical feet later, she was not.

 

 

 

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