I crank the wheel hard as another sheer drop fills my windshield. My back wheels skate out, spraying grave as I overcorrect. My knuckles are white and my eyes are fixated on the guard rail. Instinctually, I hit the gas on my aging Subaru, gaining some speed but also control. As my heart rate slowly regulates, my gaze wanders from the road toward the majestic San Juan Mountains near Telluride — and again I nearly miss a turn, 1000 feet above the valley floor. I’ve driven this pass countless times, yet the exposure and panoramic views always get me. It’s only early autumn, but already the peaks are dusted in snow and the aspen trees are turning gold.
I pull over to take in the view, letting the blood back into my fingers. Beyond Ophir Pass lies the Ophir Wall, a 600-foot plaque of silvery granite, now bronzed in the waning orange sunlight. I sit on the hood of my car and watch the sunset bring closure to what’s been an amazing day of high-altitude cragging. I’m on day two of a seven-day road trip and I’ve already visited two crags, with six more to go. This is proving to be the best trip I’ve ever done on a single tank of gas.
The San Juan Mountains, located in southwestern Colorado, are rugged and high, harboring thirteen of Colorado’s fifty-four “Fourteeners,” with hundreds of peaks over 13,000 feet. Three towns, including Ouray to the north, Silverton to the south, and Telluride (plus the small hamlet of Ophir) to the west, contain the best of the San Juan crags, and are linked together via the Alpine Loop Road, which tops 11,000 feet in several places, mostly dirt with a few stretches of sketchy pavement.

The small towns of the San Juans contain tight-knit communities that focus their attention on playing outside. The local climbing is a cocktail of potential epics, erratic mountain weather, and excellent rock. The range, mostly volcanic in origin, offers a great diversity of stone, much of it metamorphic, including gneiss and quartzite. My partner for today is Nathan Martin, a longtime Telluride resident who now lives in Moab. “Each town has a different vibe,” Martin explains. “Each is a melting pot of odd characters from rednecks, to ski bums, to blue-collar workers, to wealthy business people who are all drawn to the same thing: the mountains.” With a miner’s spirit for prospecting, Martin and I head down valley, our climbing gear bouncing like tin pans, in search of climber’s gold.

Of all the San Juan crags, the Ophir Wall — just a twenty-minute drive from Telluride — has the deepest heritage and strongest trad roots. Climbers have been epicking here for decades, and several noted celebrities climbed here when still in their teens.
Throughout the 1970s “Hot Henry” Barber worked as a guide in Telluride, climbing in Ophir (just twenty minutes from town), spending his summers guiding and creating Ophir Wall classics like Hot Wee Wee, the Y-shaped fist crack Honey Pot (5.10+), and several other bold, naturally protected routes in his signature style.
In 1978, Royal Robbins moved his Rockcraft climbing school from California to Telluride, accidentally turning the Ophir Wall into a pivotal crag in the career of another teenager, Lynn Hill. In 1980, she and John Long came to work for Robbins, and subsequently freed a beautiful A3 line on Ophir’s Mirror Wall sector, called Ophir Broke (5.12+).