from Telluride,
parking available along the road near the power station. While Ingram does not
have a trail going to its summit like Ajax, I hoped the lower elevation would
act in way of compensation to make the two efforts roughly equal. At least that's
what I told the others when asked how hard it would be.
We were at the parking area near 
the power station by 7:30a, a fairly
early start today to avoid the afternoon rain that seemed to be coming earlier
as the week wore on. We slipped through the hike & bike only 
gate
at the start of the Bridal Veil Trail heading south, and soon thereafter found
the unsigned use trail forking left about where we expected it after the
first quarter mile. The trail was in good shape, not overgrown at all, and led
up about 1,300ft into 
Grays Basin where it 
peters out among the
brush and meadows found there. From there we turned left and headed northeast up
steep, grassy slopes towards Ingram. I got ahead of the others at this point,
eventually finding my way to 
the summit alone about 9:10a, about as
straightforward as it gets. The others were not long in 
joining me
about 10min later. We spent something like half an hour 
taking it easy
in the soft grass, taking in 
the views and perusing the register.
I had plans to get another peak or two, but had no luck talking the others into
joining me. The nice, grassy slopes could be seen giving way to rock and talus
on 
the ridgeline to the higher summit, with a possibly tricky cliff
section or two as a bonus - not the sort of thing they were much interested in.
They were happy to let me go off by myself, so as they started back down the way
we'd come, I followed 
the ridge southeast towards T 10. The ridgeline
proved a piece of cake, even the cliff section having an easy class 2
talus slope that could be used to overcome it. I spent about an hour on
the traverse, covering about a mile and a half in the process. T 10
rises to almost 13,500ft with more than 500ft of prominence, providing some
outstanding views. I didn't realize that the summit has two points with the same
spot elevation (13,477ft), separated by a fifth of a mile. I visited only the
northern point, not the southern one. About 2/3mi to 
the southwest
rises 
Three Needles, the other summit I had considered visiting, but it
looked
much tougher than a class 3 scramble and I decided to punt on it until some
future visit when I could do a little more research. Instead, I decided to head
east 
off the summit to Black Bear Pass, a short distance away and a
relatively easy class 2 descent. 
The pass is a fairly popular
4x4 and 
OHV route and I would come across dozens of vehicles
on the 4mi hike back down 
the road towards Telluride. In 
places
they would be lined up 6-8 vehicles deep waiting to get by some tricky spot or
over the 
main creek crossing. The hour and a half I took to
walk the road was not much different than the average time for the Jeeps.
Back at the start, I was happy to see Eric's Subaru still there (I half-expected
to walk back to town, another 4-5mi), but they were nowhere to be seen. I
guessed that they would probably be visiting the creek above the power station
as I knew Eric was a little concerned about the creek crossing for the Silver
Lake Trail, a route he was interested in. I walked back up the Bridal Veil Creek
Trail we had started on in the morning and sure enough, found them
meditating
and reading on some of the rock formations along the creek about half a mile up.
The whole outing took just about 5hrs (perhaps an hour shorter for the others),
a fine half day effort. And best of all, no soaking rain this time...
Continued...