Saturday & Sunday, September 11-12, 2010
This weekend Amanda and I finished up our Laccolith Tour this year by heading up to the Abajo (Blue) Mountains. We started out by heading west out of Monticello to North Creek Pass.
Then we followed Indian Creek and Johnson Creek to the Nizhoni Campground.
From there we made our way up Dry Wash to do a little hiking and find some ruins. While hiking, Amanda decided that she wanted to sit down and rest while I continued on a little ways. Shortly after we split, I heard a noise off in the trees ahead of me. I stopped and listened, but did not hear the noise anymore, so I decided to carry on. Right after I started hiking again, the noise in the trees started up again, and two large bears started crossing the trail about 20 feet in front of me. At that point I turned around and safely got out of there!
We made it back to the Jeep and followed another spur road in Dry Wash that did lead us to some ruins high up in the cliffs.
We then left Dry Wash and continued on across The Causeway
View down into Tuerto Canyon
The Causeway
On our way to North Elk Ridge
We dropped down off North Elk Ridge and made our way across North Long Point and the Dark Canyon Plateau.
View over Beef Basin as we descend the switchback
Dark Canyon
Henry Mountains in the distance….it feels like I was just there last weekend 😉
Henry Mountains from the end of the trail on Middle Point
View over Bowdie Canyon
We made our way back onto North Elk Ridge and setup camp for the night near Duck Lake.
The following morning we continued on to South Elk Ridge
Overlook of Hammond Canyon
Abajo Mountains from Elk Ridge
We took another break from driving and hiked to the viewpoint for Over/Under Ruins.
When we reached Blanding, we turned north again and made our way through the Abajo Mountains again
We noticed that the colors were starting to change at the higher elevations. You can spot a yellow area in the trees behind us in this photo
When we reached Monticello again, we grabbed some lunch and then headed home for the weekend.