Top 5 Colorado Mountain Towns (for Dirtbag Climbers)

One of the biggest perks of pursuing 14ers and 13ers is having an excuse to range far and wide across Colorado. Little towns that even natives haven't heard of become favorite haunts, complete with their hole-in-the-wall restaurants, obscure festivals, historic sites, quirky attractions, sunny patios and small-batch breweries. When you exit ski country, you enter the real Colorado. 

I'm daunted by even the thought of trying to tally how many road miles I've logged in-state over the past four years. Hiking and climbing nearly every weekend, let's just say I've gotten to know Colorado fairly well. The only criteria I have for the following list is the question, "Which towns do I look forward to visiting, time and again, even as much as the surrounding summits?" This mostly boils down to mountain access, nearby free camping areas and quality of local restaurants and breweries.

No ski area = bliss.

The List

1. Ouray

The undisputed champ. Any ranking of Colorado mountain towns that doesn't start with Ouray is invalid. It has the world-famous Ouray Ice Park; access to the most beautiful mountains in the state, including the 14er Mt. Sneffels; several hot springs; affordable lodging and tons of camping; a smorgasboard of charming coffee shops and restaurants; and my second-favorite brewery in Colorado. For those of you exclaiming how much you also love the Ouray Brewery -- pipe down. That place is serviceable, but the Ourayle Brewery, also known as the Mr. Grumpy Pants Brewery, blows it out of the water. The fact that most people go to Ouray Brewery and overlook Ourayle just adds to its allure. Ourayle has what I'd argue is the best atmosphere of any bar in the state -- as long as you can appreciate sarcasm and take a joke. Also, don't be a Beermadonna. Other awesome establishments include O'Brien's, Backstreet Bistro, Mouse's Chocolates & Coffee and Goldbelt Bar & Grill.

Ouray Ice Park

2. Durango

I placed Durango here largely because of its size. It's a mountain town big enough that the average city-dweller would feel comfortable living there, at least for a year or two. It has all the amenities, a large regional airport, raucous nightlife and enough climbing to occupy several lifetimes. It's also the basecamp for most everyone venturing into the recesses of the Weminuche, Colorado's best wilderness area. I mentioned Ourayle as my second-favorite brewery, and the only one to top it -- Ska Brewing -- resides in Durango. Steamworks also has great beer in addition to some of the best pub food I've ever tasted. A trio of top-notch outdoor shops, dueling sushi restaurants, a hidden used bookstore and a variety of watering holes solidify Durango's ranking.

The Mecca.

3. Buena Vista/Salida

I know, I know, they're technically two separate towns. From a climber's perspective, they're one and the same. The surrounding Sawatch Mountains are regarded by most hikers as boring lumps of talus, but there are a lot of them, and the towns at their foot are a dirtbag's dream. There's so much dispersed camping in the area I find a new spot nearly every time I visit. The presence of Elevation Beer Co., Eddyline Brewing and the Boathouse Cantina make choosing an apres-climb stop difficult. Best of all, this area is only two hours from Denver. These are the two mountain towns I find myself in most often, and you won't catch me complaining.

Free dispersed camping outside of Buena Vista.

4. Lake City
This town could be described as Ouray's little brother, and that's not a bad thing. What Lake City lacks in size and amenities, it more than makes up for in character. This town has a fledgling ice park complete with an annual Ice Festival the first weekend of February. It's one of the highlights of my winter. Whereas the Ouray Ice Festival is a bit of a spectacle, the Lake City Ice Festival is a grassroots gathering of the tribe for beginners and crushers alike. Though Lake City tends to be overrun with Texans in the summer, it's worth wading through the sea of ATVs for access to many of the state's best high peaks. There's limitless free camping in the area, and even a hostel for the dirtbag with delicate sensibilities. Must-stop establishments include Poker Alice, Mean Jeans Coffee Shop and Packer Saloon.

Sunrise over Uncompahgre Peak, the monarch of the San Juans.

5. Silver Cliff/Westcliffe
These sister-towns are the gateway to the east side of the Sange de Cristo Range. There honestly aren't many notable attractions within the city limits, but the views are breathtaking, the amount of nearby trailheads is nearly overwhelming and Tony's Mountain Pizza has the best pies I've yet to find in Colorado. You could literally spend weeks in this area camping for free, hiking a quality 13er or 14er every day and refueling with a different pizza every night. Once someone opens a brewery here, it's game over, man. Anyone want to throw in with me?

Soaking in the post-climb views with Tony's Mountain Pizza.

Notable omissions, with reasoning:

Estes Park: Flooded with tourists, lack of free dispersed camping areas, fee required to enter Rocky Mountain National Park, only one (overloved) 14er and you have to go through Boulder to get there.

Aspen: Unless you have a trust fund...

Silverton/Telluride: Proximity to Ouray and Durango. I didn't want this to turn into a list of only mountain towns in the San Juans, which would be pretty easy. I regard both Silverton and Telluride as highly as the other Southwest Colorado entries.

Pagosa Springs: If only Pagosa had more nearby 13ers/14ers, it wouldn't just be on the list -- it would be near the top. It's a fantastic town on the borders of both the Weminuche and South San Juan wilderness areas.

Alamosa: It's the biggest settlement on the west side of the Sangres, but shockingly, you just don't go through it that often in the pursuit of summits. San Luis Valley Brewing Co. is a treat during the rare visit.

Leadville: No brewery, a kind of depressing vibe and only two passable restaurants (High Mountain Pies and Tennessee Pass Cafe). Turquoise Lake is a worthwhile weekend destination, though.

Go Panthers! ...and Broncos?

In a sea of orange, I'm tired of being a stain of black.

No, I'm not rushing out to buy a Peyton Manning jersey or changing my Facebook cover photo to “United in Orange.” The Panthers are my team. Even if I wanted to, it would be impossible to have the same passion for another.

What I mean is that I'm tired of being a hater.

The main reason I've actively rooted against the Broncos is I don’t want to be surrounded by their celebrating fans. If the Panthers are eliminated, I'd rather the eventual champion reside in some faraway corner of the country with a quiet, ignorable fanbase. Denver, like any team, has some terrible supporters. They yell insults at opposing fans, turn into raging assholes if the team plays poorly, spew uninformed rants about how PFM should win the next Nobel Prize and just generally lose sight of what's actually important in life. This subset of Denver sports fans is a tiny minority, but be honest – you can probably name a handful right now without giving it much thought.

After Carolina's playoff loss to the 49ers last year, I realized I’d become one of them.

I wasn't fun to watch football around. Friends, even close ones, publicly cheered against the Panthers because they didn't want to deal with me. I'd often wake up with feelings of embarrassment on Monday mornings. Most importantly, I'd become a poor representative of the Carolina Panthers, a sports franchise with which I have a deep and largely unrelatable connection. It's that bond I hope to attempt to explain in this post, before turning over a new leaf in my expressions of fandom. I know, I know, “it's just football.” Hear me out.

The Panthers sprang into existence just as I was entering my formative years in Charlotte, where my family had relocated only a couple years prior. Underdogs from the start, Charlotte was low on the list of cities campaigning for an NFL franchise. Thanks to owner Jerry Richardson's tenaciousness and the revolutionary idea of Personal Seat Licenses (PSLs), Charlotte pulled a major upset. The Carolina Panthers entered the league in 1995 alongside the Jacksonville Jaguars.

After an 0-5 start, Sam Mills keyed the Panthers' inaugural win.

As a 9-year-old still adjusting to a new city, one of my favorite memories is riding nearly 300 miles round-trip to Clemson, S.C., to watch the Panthers take on the defending Super Bowl-champion San Francisco 49ers on Dec. 10, 1995. The Panthers were forced to play their inaugural season there, at Clemson University, while a permanent stadium was under construction in uptown Charlotte.

My parents had divorced not long after I was born, and as a pre-teen my main passions in life were reading fantasy novels, playing video games and being as difficult as possible for my mother. That roadtrip, just the two of us, was the beginning of something special. The game was forgettable – Carolina lost 31-10 – but the experience made us both lifelong fans, and the bond between us intensified. To this day, no matter what’s going on in the world, I can count on a stream of texts from my mother during every Panthers game. Huddled under a shared blanket on metal bleachers in a half-empty college stadium in December, a mother and son found common ground. My first-ever NFL game will always remain my favorite.

The next year, the Panthers went 11-5 and made a shocking run to the NFC Championship Game. If there were any remaining doubts that The Queen City could support a professional football team, they evaporated in 1996. The city was whipped into a football frenzy. Carolina lost to the eventual Super Bowl-winning Green Bay Packers at Lambeau Field, but a new legion of fans was created, and I was one of them.

We got season tickets soon after. My mom and I went to as many games as we could and watched the rest in our North Charlotte living room. The franchise's strong start didn’t last, and we suffered through a string of disappointing seasons, including a 1-15 clunker in 2001. Hey, you have to experience the bad times to appreciate the good times. It all became worth it two years later.

It will take a Super Bowl win to dethrone the 2003 season as my favorite ever for the Carolina Panthers. In his second campaign, John Fox and newly acquired quarterback Jake Delhomme went on the most exciting and improbable playoff run in NFL history. The Panthers won close game after close game, including seven fourth-quarter comebacks to earn the nickname “Cardiac Cats.” They won four contests in overtime (of five) that season, the highlight being a double-OT victory over the 14-2 St. Louis Rams in the divisional round of the playoffs. 

X-Clown.

“X-Clown,” the play that resulted in a game-winning 69-yard touchdown from Delhomme to Steve Smith in the first play of the second overtime, will never be topped. I clearly remember lying on my living room floor in a nervous heap before the play, and then jumping and screaming and hugging my mom as Smith went the distance.

Carolina went on to lose one of the greatest Super Bowls ever played, 32-29 to the New England Patriots. The Cardiac Cats simply ran out of magic.

I graduated high school in 2004 and departed for college three hours away in Wilmington, N.C., thus ending my days as a regular attendee of home games. My mom sold off our season tickets, and a couple years later she moved to Delaware. I still watched all the games on TV, but only traveled to a handful of home games. The Panthers returned to the playoffs in 2005 and 2008, but 2003 remains their only Super Bowl appearance.

The last home game I attended, against the Bucs in 2007.

I bounced around a lot after college, from North Carolina to New Mexico to Boston and eventually to Denver. No matter where I am, the Panthers always give me something to look forward to on Sundays. A series of dismal seasons finally ended with last year's playoff berth, and honestly I think I’d just forgotten how to handle success. I was consumed by the 12-4 team and lost perspective, especially in regards to the even-better 13-3 Broncos. I was surrounded by people who only wanted to rave about the home team, while I felt my poor small-market Panthers were largely ignored.

Even worse, in my eyes, were the bandwagon fans. Denver is a city of transplants, and I watched as one-by-one, fans of other teams or people who didn't even like football slyly slipped on the orange-and-blue. I felt cheated by the fact that, if the Broncos won the Super Bowl, these first-year supporters would experience the jubilation that I've thirsted for during 20 years of Panthers football. It made me bitter, angry and spiteful. I publicly taunted my friends when the Broncos lost to the Seahawks.

In retrospect, I'm ashamed by the fact I was openly cheering for people I care about to experience sadness. Whether it comes from football or anything else in life, I should root for my friends to be happy and not let misguided jealousy hinder my relationships.

Don't get me wrong, a little lighthearted trash talk is a huge part of what makes sports fun. It just has to stop short of becoming personal. Keep the “Scam Newton” jokes coming, as long as you’re prepared for me to fire back.

A dirty little secret: I'm a bandwagon Panthers fan. Even after that first game I attended in 1995, I was split between the Panthers and the Miami Dolphins. I'd spent my youth in South Florida before moving to Charlotte, and Dan Marino was my childhood hero. It took the 1996 playoff run to fully convert me to the Panthers. So who am I to judge if someone who just moved to Denver wants to hop on the Broncos bandwagon? That's how fans are made.

Over the course of this season, I've made an effort to let go of my hate. Despite some lapses, it's been a largely successful experiment. I've stopped letting losses affect my mood (it IS just football), I've had friendly conversations with opposing fans and I've eliminated the word Sewer Dome from my vocabulary. Will I still make jokes at the Saints’ expense? Of course. I'm just trying to take the actual maliciousness out of it.

As the playoffs start, I know there are some people out there who will be rooting against the Panthers because they “don't want to have to hear about it from Golden.” That’s fine. I’m vocal, especially on social media, because I love my team. I sometimes feel my eyes get a little misty when I read about Sam Mills or watch “X-Clown” on YouTube. The Panthers remind me of home, of family, of childhood, of dozens of formative memories. They are the one thing still connecting me to my hometown of Charlotte. Posting about them is part of the experience for me, and I realize that can gett annoying, because almost no one cares about little ol' Carolina. What I do promise is that any posts will purely be celebrating the Panthers, and not putting down other teams or their supporters.

The Panthers don't have six rings or a rich history; they've yet to even record back-to-back winning seasons. What tradition they do have, however, is something I've experienced from the very beginning. I don't have to read about it in books or hear about it from my grandpa. That's pretty cool, too.

In the likely scenario the Panthers are eliminated before the Super Bowl, will I become a Broncos fan? No. But I will become a fan of the Broncos fans who enrich my life. As the poignant American History X quote goes, “Hate is baggage. Life's too short to be pissed off all the time.”

iPhone photo taken while watching the Panthers win the NFC South this year -- which I got to watch with my mom.

Keep Pounding.