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Blaine Basin

Saturday & Sunday, July 9-10, 2016

Since Diane and I won’t be able to get back into the outdoors for the rest of the month I wanted to do a quick and easy overnight backpacking trip in the mountains this weekend. I was looking for something close to home that wouldn’t be crowded and thought that Blaine Basin in the Sneffels Range of the San Juan Mountains would be a good option. We left home later than usual on Saturday morning and arrived at the Blue Lakes Trailhead around 11am. I was blown away by how many vehicles were at the trailhead! It was crazy! There were cars lined up and down the road pulled over any place they could find to park. At this point I was second guessing the trip because I wasn’t convinced that all of these people were headed to the Blue Lakes?

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Owl & Fish Creek Canyons

Friday – Sunday, April 29 – May 1, 2016

This weekend Diane and I had taken Friday off work so we could head down to Cedar Mesa on a three-day backpacking trip into Fish Creek Canyon and Owl Creek Canyon. We had originally planned on driving down Thursday evening after work, but with rainy weather in the forecast we decided to stay home Thursday night and left very early on Friday morning. We passed through Moab just in time to stop for breakfast at the Moab Diner and then continued on to the Kane Gulch Ranger Station to pick up our permits. After watching the video and grabbing our permits we finished the short drive to the trailhead and got ready to start the hike.

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Grand Gulch: Pollys Canyon to Collins Canyon

Wednesday – Saturday, April 13-16, 2016

Spending a few days backpacking in southern Utah seems to have become an annual tradition for Dave, Jared and myself. A few months ago we started planning our trip to visit another section of Grand Gulch between Pollys Canyon and Collins Canyon that we had not been through before and Dave secured the backpacking permits for our small group. Our plan for Wednesday was to drive down and meet up at a campsite along the road to the Collins Canyon Trailhead. Dave and Jared would be leaving early in the afternoon from Salt Lake City and I’d be leaving after work from Grand Junction. I stopped for a quick dinner in Moab and made it to the campsite just after the sun set for the day. They had arrived about an hour before me. I quickly got my tentcot setup just after dark and we all went to bed early on this beautiful evening.

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Big Blue Creek

Labor Day Weekend | Saturday – Monday, September 5-7, 2015

This year for the long Labor Day weekend I wanted to go on another backpacking trip into the Uncompahgre Wilderness of Colorado’s San Juan Mountains, but I also wanted to go somewhere that was unlikely to be crowded since this is probably one of the busiest camping weekends of the year. After some research I selected the Big Blue Creek drainage as our destination. Not only was there very little information about this area online and in guides, which hopefully meant it wouldn’t be very crowded, but I was also hoping to photograph the north face of Uncompahgre Peak (14,309) at sunrise since I hadn’t seen too many photos of this massive mountain from that side. I had originally thought about connecting the Fall Creek and Failes Creek trails to create a big loop hike but changed that idea so that I would be able to spend two mornings photographing Uncompahgre Peak to help improve my chances of catching a great sunrise.

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Mount Sopris: Northern Sentinel of the Elk Mountains

Saturday & Sunday, August 29-30, 2015

Even though it’s less than fifty feet shy of registering as one of Colorado’s 13,000 foot peaks, Mount Sopris (12,953) dominates the skyline over Carbondale and the lower Roaring Fork Valley and stands as the northern sentinel of the Elk Mountains. The surrounding Roaring Fork and Crystal River drainages give Mount Sopris vertical prominence that few other mountains in Colorado can match, rising over 6,000 feet in just a few miles. Mount Sopris is also notable for having two summits that are one-half mile apart and equal in elevation.

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Category: Backpacking

Blaine Basin

Owl & Fish Creek Canyons

Grand Gulch: Pollys Canyon to Collins Canyon

Big Blue Creek

Mount Sopris: Northern Sentinel of the Elk Mountains