Colorado's San Juans

Clearly, the San Juans are Colorado's best eye candy, in the usual postcard sense. The San Juans are newer than the other ranges and are volcanic, rather than folded or fault block ranges. Here was our first route in the San Juans:

Stratified sedimentary layers I'm used to--but a green layer? How could a wind-blown seed find purchase on a slope like this?

A motorist stopped when he saw my little dog in the BOB trailer behind the mountain bike. He was a serious amateur photographer and was studied up on nature. He thought the seeds would have been dropped by birds into the cracks or holes that even a steep slope must have. Probably so, but how did these plants or bushes propagate up there?

We finished our ride and returned to find a Silverton couple saddling up two llamas, for an overnight trek up to an alpine lake. 

 
They are members of the camel family, but don't have humps. Their hooves are more like a hard pad, with two-toes and funny toe nails. How would these pack animals fare in a competition with burros? It would all depend on the rules. The llamas would probably survive drought better. They are ruminants that could survive on a wide variety of grasses and plants. Burros have to pack their own chow. 

I've decided that Colorado's San Juans have better eye-candy than recreation, at least from my specialized point of view. Harsh volcanic ground is murder on dog pads and mountain bikes. Topography can be too steep for RV boondocking. I am better off in the Arkansas or San Luis valleys. But most of all, crossing the dirt-road passes in Jeep Wranglers has been turned into a mass-tourist thing, which ruins it for mountain biking.