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Tag: alpenglow

The White Rim

Canyonlands National Park’s 50th Birthday
Friday – Sunday, September 12-14, 2014

So far I’ve had a great year exploring many new areas of Canyonlands National Park. I was finally able to backpack through Salt Creek Canyon in The Needles, which had been a longtime goal of mine and one of the main reasons I started backpacking in the first place. Then I spent a nice weekend in The Maze with Diane and made it to the Maze Overlook and also discovered what a wonderful place Millard Canyon is. We even made it to The Great Gallery in Horseshoe Canyon on that trip so that Diane was able to view some of the magnificent rock art there for the first time. With all these great trips this year I thought I would try my luck again at completing the White Rim Road in the Island in the Sky, too.

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Handies Peak II

Saturday & Sunday, August 16-17, 2014

Diane has been hiking in the mountains with me all summer and was finally ready to try climbing her first 14er. She left the decision of which 14er we would climb up to me, so I decided we would hike up Handies Peak in the San Juan Mountains. Handies Peak was my first 14er back in 2010, so I knew it would be a good one to start out on. It’s also one of the easier hikes at 2.9 miles in length (one way) with 2,500 feet of elevation gain. She has hiked longer trails with more elevation gain with me before, so I was confident she would make it to the top. Since Handies was my first, I was also looking forward to climbing it again to see how much easier it would be for me the second time around. Plus I was looking forward to getting an earlier start this time so I could watch the sunrise with a better camera from near the top.

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Blue Lakes in the Mount Sneffels Wilderness

Saturday & Sunday, August 2-3, 2014

This weekend Diane and I spent a nice relaxing overnight backpacking trip at the Blue Lakes in the Mount Sneffels Wilderness. I have wanted to hike up to the Blue Lakes for many years and am glad I was finally able to get up that way. The scenery was beautiful and the weather was nice all weekend, too. While it looked like we might receive some of the typical afternoon storms on Saturday, they managed to miss us and we never saw a drop of rain all weekend. There seemed to be quite a few bugs out this time of the year, especially near the large patches of wildflowers we came across, but we managed to keep the mosquitoes away with some DEET bug spray that seemed to work well. While there were a bunch of people camped on the northwest side of the lower lake when we arrived, we crossed the outlet creek and found a nice campsite on the northeast side where no one was camped. Only one other person ended up setting up camp on this side of the lake, so it was nice and quiet.

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Huron Peak

Saturday & Sunday, July 12-13, 2014

This weekend I set out to climb my first 14er of the season. I chose to try Huron Peak since it’s in an area of the Sawatch Range that I haven’t really spent much time in, plus it’s not supposed to be too difficult of a hike which would be a good warm-up for me since I haven’t hiked at this elevation since last summer. At 14,003 feet, Huron Peak is ranked 52 out of the 53 ranked peaks over 14,000 feet in Colorado. I had originally planned to climb Huron Peak over the Fourth of July weekend, but unfortunately I got a pretty bad cold that kept me home for that entire weekend, so I was looking forward to making it up this weekend.

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Fisher Towers & The Dolores River Overlook

Saturday, April 5, 2014

A few weeks ago Diane surprised me by signing us up for a horseback ride at the Hauer Ranch in Professor Valley along the Colorado River. I had casually mentioned to her that it was something I wanted to try but never seemed to get around to, so I’m glad she finally helped me get it set up. Our two-hour ride was scheduled on Saturday morning at 9:00am, so we left early from home and made it with plenty of time to spare. After filling out the required paperwork and then getting on the horses our ride took us east across the highway and followed a shallow wash towards the Fisher Towers. The trail then turned south and climbed a divide between the wash we were in and Onion Creek. Then we followed Onion Creek back towards the Colorado River and ended up at the ranch again. It was a nice ride with great scenery but my knees were really killing me when we made it back to the ranch from being slightly bent the whole time.

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