A Beautiful Hike on Baldy Mountain Near Breckenridge, Colorado

Last week I went on an interesting and beautiful hike on Baldy Mountain, southeast of Breckenridge, Colorado, with my "Women With Altitude" group. We first hiked up to the abandoned Mountain Pride mine and its ghost town at the head of Illinois Gulch. Nearly a million dollars of ore contain gold, silver, lead, and zinc were pulled out of the mine in the late 1800s.

See the photos below. The first two are of the mine works, and the next three are of structures in the ghost town. As you can see from the fresh toilet paper in the outhouse-without-a-door, there's still someone inhabiting the town, possibly a squatter. Lastly, there's a photo of one of the gravesites past the mine ruins. A rusted tin can dump is near the gravesites.

Next, we hiked to a beautiful meadow strewn with many species of wildflowers, including brilliant red Indian paintbrush, white yarrow, purple asters, yellow sunflowers and goldenrod, dark blue monkshood, and more. We ate lunch in the meadow and enjoyed the views (see below). I'm wearing the green sun hat in the first photo, second from the right. Anyone know what the small blue and gray butterflies are in the last photo?