'Genuinely petrified': I drove America's most dangerous highway
We're only a few minutes into our journey - deliberately attempting America's most dangerous highway - and I'm thinking about our potentially soon-to-be-orphaned children back home in Australia.
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"What on earth were we thinking?" I say to my wife in the passenger seat, clutching our GoPro with trembling hands.
My knuckles are white, my nose is bleeding from the altitude, and my shoulders are tense from hunching forward and squinting through the windscreen.
We're only a few minutes into our journey from Durango to Ouray via Silverton in Colorado's jaw-droppingly beautiful San Juan Mountains - deliberately attempting America's most dangerous highway - and I'm thinking about our potentially soon-to-be-orphaned children back home in Australia. I'm genuinely petrified.
Light snow has just started falling, but locals have assured us that today will still be a "good day" to take on the Million Dollar Highway despite the inclement weather.
Googling our upcoming trip was not a helpful way to start. I uncovered that a local man had slid off the pass in his 4WD only a few days ago in wintery conditions. Luckily, he survived (only just) to tell the story.
Many who attempt the hairpin turns and unforgiving black ice bitumen of this section of US Highway 550 don't make it to their final destination. In fact, according to The Durango Herald, there's an average of 40 accidents each year and about seven deaths. In 2019, the Million Dollar Highway was closed for two months of the winter after more than a dozen avalanches pummelled the road.
The moral of the story is always to check the conditions before you set off and ask a local for advice. The Colorado Department of Transportation also has a live map with photographs detailing the conditions.
No one knows why it is called the Million Dollar Highway. Folklore says that it cost a million dollars for workers to construct every sketchy kilometre along three treacherous mountain passes.
The name is apt because you'll need to pay me a million dollars to get me to do it again.
The most stunning section is Red Mountain, which comprises three separate jagged-edged passes (one has more than 100 metres of vertical drop just outside your car door).
We come upon three enormous clumps of ice strewn across the first pass, which would've tumbled from above earlier that morning. We don't dare swerve to dodge them for fear of losing control and instead crash through them with gritted teeth.
There are no guard rails here, either, because, as the most avalanche-prone highway in North America, when snow inevitably covers the road, the plough trucks need to be able to quickly push it over the edge to clear the way for truck traffic that supply the remote mountain towns.
It will take you about seven hours to reach the highway from Denver via Montrose; however, most will tackle it in the safest direction, heading north from the historic mining town of Durango. It's safer because you hug the side of the mountain most of the way.
But this drive is so much more than just the allure of the big vistas and vertigo that bring tourists like us here; the twin towns of Silverton and Ouray are magnets for mountain lovers in both winter and summer.
Durango is a cowboy time capsule of a bygone era, often considered the springboard for nearby national parks and the hidden ski resort of Purgatory. So picturesque, Hollywood descended on the town nearly a century ago. Since 1925, almost 30 films have been shot in the streets and surrounding mountains, including Butch Cassidy and The Sundance Kid, National Lampoon's Family Vacation, City Slickers and Cliffhanger.
The town of Silverton is a necessary halfway point for this sort of drive. You'll want to stop here to collect your thoughts and take in the sights. We arrive early on a Tuesday, and the streets are eerily quiet. There's a ghost-like mist hovering over the 4,000-metre peaks around us. Don't miss a quick stop at Bear Coffee for their famous "Dark Star" - a triple espresso shot in a cup of standard drip coffee will send your already racing heart into overdrive for the final leg.
Finally, the town of Ouray markets itself as the 'Switzerland of Colorado', and it is easy to see why. Stop before the switchback that descends into town and look back at the mountains behind you. Dozens of Gargantuan snow-drenched peaks impose over this town like sentries keeping watch.
Grab a sandwich and some jerky from the Timberline Deli of Ouray, and if you thought you were brave taking the Million Dollar Highway, stop for a moment at the Ouray Ice Park and watch in awe as climbers defy gravity on walls of ice tethered by just a single rope and axe.
Roads and people are built differently up here, and you’d need to pay me more than a million dollars to climb an ice wall.
The journalist travelled as a guest of the Colorado Tourism Office
Originally published as 'Genuinely petrified': I drove America's most dangerous highway
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