2013 // ADVENTR.co

Monument Canyon

Sunday, September 15, 2013

On Thursday evening my friend Lisa contacted me to let me know she was taking a last minute trip to the Colorado National Monument this weekend and she wanted to see if I was available to go hiking on Sunday morning. It just so happened that I planned to be home all this weekend and was planning on hiking around the Monument already. We planned to meet up on Sunday morning and hike Monument Canyon from top to bottom. It has been a few years since I hiked the full canyon and I was looking forward to it. We met at the lower trailhead at 8:00am, left her car there and then took my Jeep up to the upper trailhead.

The Island

Saturday, September 14, 2013

I’ve seen The Island sticking up between Wedding Canyon and Monument Canyon for many years while photographing the Colorado National Monument from the overlooks along Rim Rock Drive. You can see The Island across the canyon in the photo below taken earlier this year from Grand View. For a long time I’ve wanted to hike up there but never seemed to get around to it. I decided to change that this weekend.

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Another Monument Sunset

Wednesday, September 11, 2013

It’s been a while since I headed up to the Colorado National Monument after work to catch a sunset, so after all the rain we’ve had in the past few days I thought it might be a good idea to head up there this evening since the storms had finally started to clear.

Flash Flood in No Thoroughfare Canyon

Tuesday, August 27, 2013

Shortly after getting home from work today, there was a flash flood warning issued for the east side of the Colorado National Monument because of heavy rain from slow-moving storms. I grabbed my camera and headed out the door to see what I could find. I drove around the Monument for a little seeing waterfalls everywhere and then decided to hike along No Thoroughfare Canyon to see if I could make it to the first pool/fall. Sorry for the poor quality of the photos in this report, but I only took my phone with me on this last minute hike.

Mount Antero & Mount Princeton

Friday – Sunday, August 23-25, 2013

One of my goals this year was to summit four new 14ers, and after this trip (plus my weekend in early July) I have met it. I’ve currently completed ten 14ers and hope to summit five more next year. This trip started out on a sour note. After leaving work on Friday afternoon and heading east on I-70, I got stopped in traffic because of flooding near Parachute. After waiting for over an hour, the state patrol turned us around near De Beque and said that the highway would be closed for about six hours. At this point my options were to cancel the trip or take a different route into the mountains and not arrive until much later at night than I had hoped. I didn’t want to cancel the trip, so I drove back to the Grand Valley and then took US 50 through Delta, Montrose and Gunnison.