Trujillo remembers a world in which Ouray used to have five grocery stores, back when the nearby Camp Bird Mine was open and still very active. He also remembers how, by the 1970s, his hometown had much less traffic and many more empty storefronts, as mine operations were winding down.
Ouray, which is so squeezed by skyscraper mountains that it calls itself the Switzerland of America, is now a busy tourist destination, with tons of off-road vehicles tackling Imogene Pass whenever it’s not covered in snow.
But during Trujillo’s first run over the pass, “I saw nobody!” he exclaimed.
Driving his old Subaru, Trujillo showed off the route, which starts on a paved road that quickly turned to dirt as he left town.
Pine trees and aspens hugged the roadway, rocky peaks in the distance. Trujillo gave a tour that was part course description, part history lesson.
He passed by cottages and cabins, some humble, some fancy. None of them, he explained, were there in the 1970s, before Ouray was “discovered.”
“But you have to keep in mind that in the mining era, in the 1880s and ’90s and early 1900s, miners and prospectors lived everywhere in these mountains. So these new houses are nothing new, so to speak,” he said, with a little chuckle.
Trujillo drove past the closed mine bordered by a dilapidated Victorian home and old schoolhouse, where the school bus used to be a Jeep Willy plastered with homemade signs. He passed by campgrounds that didn’t exist in1974.
“OK, we’re approaching mile five," he said. “Remember it’s 10 miles to the top from the Ouray side. Ten miles and 50 yards, something like that.”
If anyone would know the exact number of yards, it would be Trujillo.
Courtesy Paul Francis via Rick Trujillo
As the road got rougher, he seemed completely unfazed.
“Hey! This is a good road!” he said, laughing, his car lurching and bumping over bedrock. He dodged deep potholes that looked like they were filled with milky coffee.
Eventually, just before mile six, he pulled off and parked, not wanting to “tear up” his car.
“OK, this is where it starts to get rough,” he said, power walking with seemingly no struggle up the steep grade, into increasingly thin air.
He talked about his first time running this pass as if it was no big deal.
“Hey, I was in my 20s. I’m now 75. I now understand it requires some work to do this stuff,” he said, with more laughs. “But in those days it just came naturally.”
He ran without any food or water.
“No, I never gave it a thought.”
Trujillo remembers he just kept moving, up through the switchbacks, meadows giving way to rock walls and deadly drop-offs. Toward the top of the pass, he found an almost-all stone world, with jagged rock faces ahead of him. At the summit, there was a sea of mountains all around him.
On a clear day, “you can see the La Sal Mountains in Utah, the Abajo Mountains in Utah,” he said. “On a really clear day, you can even see the Henry Mountains, over by Lake Powell.”
The course is knock-your-socks-off beautiful — and astonishingly hard, despite what 26-year-old him thought at the time. Every year at the race’s course briefing, he drills one acronym into the runners: IFM.
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'I wanted to see if I could do it!' How a training run over Imogene Pass became a beloved Colorado tradition - Colorado Public Radio
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