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Category: Highpointing

Stinking Desert National Monument

After Work Adventures | Wednesday, September 6, 2023

Even though it was a little bit warmer out today than yesterday, I thought it would be a good time to head out after work so I could drive and hike to the top of a couple easy highpoints and overlooks located in the desert between Grand Junction, Delta, the Grand Mesa and the Gunnison River, and maybe even catch the sunset before heading home. This is an area that longtime locals affectionately (or maybe it’s not so affectionate) call the Stinking Desert. I’ve heard stories from long before my time living in Grand Junction about how an official-looking sign for the Stinking Desert National Monument would show up along the highway during holiday weekends, and I’ve always thought that would have been funny to see, so I’m going to honor that unofficial National Monument with this little Trip Report. Welcome to the Stinking Desert!

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Fruita Dugway to Historic Trails View & Dinosaur Hill

Colorado National Monument | Saturday, August 12, 2023

Since Diane and I are getting onto the Colorado River tomorrow morning for three days and then leaving to spend the rest of the week in the Wind Rivers of Wyoming right afterwards, I needed to stay close to home today so we could finish preparing and packing for both trips. I still wanted to get out for a short local hike on Saturday morning, so I was up before sunrise and drove over to the edge of the McInnis Canyons National Conservation Area to spend a couple hours hiking partway up the Fruita Dugway to the Historic Trails Overlook in the Colorado National Monument. I arrived at the Kodels Canyon Trailhead just outside of Fruita about twenty minutes before sunrise and started hiking up the trail toward Kodels Canyon.

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South San Juan Mountains from Elwood Pass

Friday – Monday, July 28 – 31, 2023

After spending the last two days around the Animas River Valley between Coal Bank Pass and Durango, I decided to spend the next couple of days further south and east in a distant part of the San Juan Mountains that I don’t get around to visiting very often. I’ve definitely been long overdue for another visit to the South San Juan Mountains between Wolf Creek Pass and the New Mexico state line and figured that this would be a good opportunity to get back since it wasn’t too much further away. After the GIS Colorado Summer Meetup concluded late in the morning on Friday I packed up my Jeep and made my way over to Pagosa Springs to continue on with the next leg of the trip.

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West Elk Loop: Last of the Curecanti Trails

Curecanti National Recreation Area | Saturday & Sunday, June 24-25, 2023

After hiking through the Dark Canyon of Anthracite Creek on Saturday morning I returned to Hotchkiss and grabbed a burger from 133 BRGR for an early lunch and then continued following the West Elk Loop Scenic Byway into the Curecanti National Recreation Area so that I could finish what I started last month and complete hiking all of the official trails within the park. I planned to start with the Neversink Trail, which is located just a few miles outside of Gunnison at the very eastern edge of the Recreation Area, and then I would work my way back west toward home. Since none of the three trails I had left to hike were very long, I also explored a couple of the backroads along the way that headed up toward the edge of the West Elk Wilderness in the Gunnison National Forest.

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Triangle Mesa from Cactus Park

Dominguez Canyon Wilderness | Sunday, June 18, 2023

After spending Saturday floating through The Chute of Muddy Creek, I was originally planning to spend Sunday morning hiking in the Raggeds Wilderness of the Elk Mountains. However, once I realized that Colorado Highway 133 was still closed before Somerset and didn’t feel like driving the long way around, I cancelled those plans. Instead, I decided to stay closer to home and went for a morning hike to the summit of Triangle Mesa in the Dominguez Canyon Wilderness.

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