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Rico – Silverton Trail

Saturday & Sunday, July 8-9, 2017

Diane and I spent the past weekend in the San Juan Mountains near Silverton getting in a little high elevation hiking. We left home early on Saturday morning and drove all the way to the end of the Bandora Mine Road in the South Fork of Mineral Creek and found a campsite shortly before arriving at the trailhead. We quickly setup camp and then started hiking up the Rico – Silverton Trail to it’s intersection with The Colorado Trail. There were a lot of wildflowers along the trail, especially in South Park along with some patches of snow over parts of The Colorado Trail, including a big drift across Rolling Mountain Pass. When we reached the high point of the trail I climbed to the summit of an unnamed 12er that offered great views of Engineer Mountain, Jura Knob and the surrounding area.

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Dry Mountain in the Wasatch Range

Friday – Sunday, June 30 – July 2, 2017

This weekend I was heading up to Salt Lake City to see Rise Against at the USANA Amphitheater on Saturday evening, but since I have a Colorado 14er scheduled to climb later this month I really need to make sure that I’m in shape for it by hiking in the mountains as much as I can this month. Before the trip I did a little research to see if there were any shorter hikes with a couple thousand feet of elevation gain in the Wasatch Mountains that I would be able to squeeze into the trip and I settled on climbing Dry Mountain (9,865) near Santaquin. This mountain wasn’t too far out of my way and it looked like I would also be able to camp near the trailhead the night before. Plus, there wasn’t much information about it online, so I figured the trail wouldn’t be crowded, either. Dry Mountain is one of the shorter peaks found along the Wasatch Front but the trail to it’s summit is just over two miles in length with about 2,000 feet of elevation gain, so it fit my needs perfectly. This peak comes in at #97 on Utah’s 100 Most Prominent Peaks List with 1,845 feet of prominence. Apparently, this mountain is also featured prominently in the movie Footloose, but since I’ve never seen it I can’t confirm.

Cedar Mesa Ruins

Friday – Sunday, June 9-11, 2017

Typically I avoid visiting Cedar Mesa in June because of the hotter temperatures and especially because of the annoying cedar gnats (no-see-ums) that are usually prevalent at this time of the year. However, I made an exception this year since my friend Alan and his father would be visiting the area this weekend and invited me to join them. Our friend Jerry, who I met last year on a backpacking trip on the Arizona Strip was going to be there and my old friend John Mumaw, who I hadn’t seen in a few years, was also going to be stopping by.

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Backpacking The Great Sand Dunes

Friday – Sunday, June 2-4, 2017

This year I have been trying to cross things off my to-do list that have been on there for way too long. One of the items on my list that I have been looking at for a number of years was backpacking into The Great Sand Dunes. Earlier this year I decided that this was finally the year I was going to go for it! After some research it looked like June would be a good time to go. Even though Great Sand Dunes National Park is usually pretty busy in June since Medano Creek is typically at peak flow, I figured it wouldn’t matter much for us since we would be hiking and camping deeper in the dune field than most visitors go. Looking at my calendar, my only free weekend in June was the very first weekend (It’s going to be a busy month!), which was a little earlier than I would like to have gone, but since it was our only option that’s when we decided to go.

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Rambling Around Robbers Roost

Maze Memorial Weekend IV | Memorial Day Weekend
Friday – Monday, May 26-29, 2017

After spending the last three Memorial Day Weekends in and around The Maze District of Canyonlands National Park, this year we decided to skip visiting The Maze proper and stayed on top of The Orange Cliffs in Robbers Roost country. As usual, we left home after work on Friday evening and headed west into Utah. We stopped for a quick dinner and to fuel up the Jeep in Green River and then made our way to the Hans Flat Ranger Station to pickup our permit for the weekend. The wind was pretty brutal this evening and it really took a toll on my fuel mileage during the drive. There was a lot of sand blowing across the road to Hans Flat in places, but the sky and light was pretty nice during the drive. It looked like there was a good chance for one nice sunset before the clouds disappeared for the remainder of the weekend.

Category: Camping

Rico – Silverton Trail

Dry Mountain in the Wasatch Range

Cedar Mesa Ruins

Backpacking The Great Sand Dunes

Rambling Around Robbers Roost