Telluride Colorado, June 2025

We spent 8 nights (5/31-6/8) at an AirBnb condominium in Telluride. Our condo was small but right along the river trail with views of the mountains and river off the back balcony.

Our week included many hikes, many waterfalls, a few gondola rides, one bike ride, one balloon festival and a few good restaurants. Our weather was meh - two really nice days and a lot of rain, so we were pleased to have a kitchen. But, when the weather was nice (or at least not pouring), we took advantage.

Our hikes included (~33 miles, ~8,800 ft in elevation)

Sunday: Cornet Creek Falls Hike
Monday: Bear Creek Falls
Wednesday: Blue Lake via Bridal Veil Trail (although we didn't finish this one)
Friday: Jud Wiebe Memorial Trail and Village Trail
Saturday: Imogene Pass to from Telluride to Tomboy Mine

On Tuesday, we biked the Valley Floor and Telluride Bike Path Loop. We like the Loop more than the Floor as we not experienced mountain bikers, although some of the views were quite breathtaking.

Restaurants we would repeat included:

Brown Dog Pizza - they have won awards - it was so good we finished ours and ordered a second.
Siam - very small Thai restaurant with only a few tables but tasty noodles
There - a small neighborhood bar/restaurant that happened to be across the street and
Woodear Whisky Lounge- for some ramen

Cornet Creek Falls

Us in front of Cornet Creek Falls

Sunset from Station St. Sofia (gondola stop between Telluride and Mountain Village)

Bear Creek Falls

Us getting cold and wet in front of Bear Creek Falls

View from Valley Floor

One of many stops along the valley floor

More views from the valley floor

Prairie dog along the bike path

Amazing views of the snow-capped mountains from the bike path

Elk along the bike path

Wednesday morning started off with beautiful, bright-blue skies for our hike to Bridal Veil Falls and then on to Blue Lake. Sadly after a couple of hours and two thousand feet in elevation the snow banks became too large and the clouds rolled in so we turned around before making it to the lake. The walk back to the car was cold and wet! In the end we did about 7 of 10 miles total.

Bridal veil falls from the start

Along the trial

Lower falls

Bridal Veil Falls

Snow banks became larger as we progressed towards Blue Lake

Bones along the trail to Blue Lake

After a full day of rain on Thursday we were ambitions on Friday and did two 4m hikes. The first in the morning on the north side of Telluride. After the morning hike, we took the gondola to Mountain Village where we grabbed a quick bite and then began our second hike up to the top of the mountain to the St. Sofia station where we took the gondola back to Telluride.

From Jud Wiebe Trail

Filip on the trail

Lookout on Jud Wiebe

Old log cabin along the Village Trail

Views of the storm rolling in from the Village Trail (fortunately we made it back before the rain)

For Saturday we had planned to watch the Balloon Festival from Tomboy Road (AKA Imogene Pass) but we weren't sure how far of a hike we would do. The entire pass is 18 miles so we knew we wouldn't make it that far. After about a mile in, we could see a few balloons from the trail and watched as number increased over the next hour. Sadly, high winds prevented the launch of the balloons (so we were happy we didn't get up at 6 to go to the park), but it was fun to watch them inflate from afar.

We continued our hike up the pass after the balloons were deflated. After 5 miles and 2,746 ft elevation gain we made to an old abandoned mining village called Tomboy ghost mine and the snow banks began to grow. (Although with 5 more miles to go downhill, we wouldn't have continued even if there were no snow banks.)