United States
Ouray
Hot springs steaming beneath ice-climbing walls in a box canyon called the Switzerland of America.
Steam rises off the open-air pools while, in winter, the gorge below town hangs with curtains of farmed blue ice that climbers scale with axes. Ouray is wedged into a narrow notch of the San Juans with thirteen-thousand-foot peaks on three sides, and the Uncompahgre River runs straight through the middle.
Ouray has been called the Switzerland of America since the mining days, hemmed in by an amphitheatre of peaks that turns every street view vertical. Its geothermal endowment is serious: 150-degree mineral water is gravity-fed more than a mile from Box Canyon to the town's year-round hot springs pool, and the county's springs are unusual in carrying none of the rotten-egg sulphur smell. In winter the Ouray Ice Park, a human-made climbing park in the Uncompahgre Gorge within walking distance of Main Street, offers more than 150 named ice and mixed climbs along almost two miles of canyon, free to anyone with the nerve. South of town the Million Dollar Highway hangs on the cliff faces towards Silverton, famously short of guardrails, one of the great white-knuckle drives in America.
Couple
Soak in the canyon-walled pools while snow settles on the peaks, then walk two blocks to dinner in a Victorian town that never needed a traffic light.
Friends
Learn ice climbing in the gorge before lunch, drive the Million Dollar Highway in the afternoon and compare nerve over chocolate-scrap cookies after.
- The year-round hot springs pool is fed by 150-degree mineral water gravity-piped from Box Canyon, and the county's springs carry no sulphur smell.
- The Ouray Ice Park hangs more than 150 named ice and mixed climbs in the gorge below town, human-made, free to climb and walkable from Main Street.
- The Million Dollar Highway south of town clings to cliff faces with famously few guardrails on its way over the passes to Silverton.
- Thirteen-thousand-foot peaks close the horizon on three sides, so the whole town feels like the floor of an amphitheatre.
Scrap cookies at the town chocolatier, sugar-cookie dough folded through offcuts from the chocolate room.
Out of the springs and into Ouray Brewery, where the ales are brewed in town and supper follows the soak.
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