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The Grandest of Gulches: Back Into Lower Grand Gulch

Cedar Mesa Chronicles: Chapter 11 | Thursday – Sunday, March 21-24, 2024

This week Diane and I took Thursday and Friday off from work so we could meet up with our friend Jared and spend a couple of days backpacking into lower Grand Gulch within the Bears Ears National Monument. While this would be Diane’s first time hiking into this part of Grand Gulch, Jared and I had hiked here about nine years ago and I was really looking forward to the return visit. From the very start of the hike we could tell there was a lot of water in the canyon from recent storms and that it might have even flash flooded recently, but all that water also created a lot of quicksand and mud in the wash that significantly slowed down our progress and forced us to follow brushy deer trails across the benches in many places. The weather during the first three days of our hike was great and the nights even stayed pretty warm, we only encountered wet weather during our final night in the canyon and during the hike back out of Collins Canyon. Here are some photos taken during our four days in Grand Gulch.

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Rim to River: The Grand Canyon & Phantom Ranch

Grand Canyon National Park | Tuesday – Saturday, January 16-20, 2024

After spending a the first part of the week in Petrified Forest National Park we stayed at a hotel in Flagstaff for one night and then drove over to the South Rim of the Grand Canyon on Tuesday morning by way of Williams and Tusayan. Since this was my very first time to the South Rim we headed straight to Mather Point for my first view of the canyon from this side. Then we spent the rest of the morning and early afternoon visiting all of the overlooks along Desert View Drive as we made our way out to the Desert View Watchtower and then back again.

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Elk Mountains: Capitol Creek Trail to Capitol Lake

Maroon Bells – Snowmass Wilderness | Saturday & Sunday, July 22-23, 2023

Almost nine years ago now, Diane was with me while I was photographing Fall Colors in the Elk Mountains near the Capitol Creek Trailhead, and while we were there she mentioned to me that she would like to backpack to Capitol Lake sometime, and I never forgot about it. However, we had never got around to doing that hike yet because it’s such a popular location and I’ve always been worried about hiking in and not finding a campsite near the lake on a weekend. But earlier this year when the White River National Forest finally implemented a permit system for the designated campsites around Capitol Lake, I hopped onto Recreation.gov the day they became available and booked a site for us on this weekend in late July. On Saturday morning we woke up extra early and made our way over to the Capitol Creek Trailhead to start our hike up to Capitol Lake.

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The Flat Tops: Marvine Trail to the Marvine Lakes

Flat Tops Wilderness | Saturday & Sunday, July 1-2, 2023

Now that Diane is finally finished with school and will hopefully be joining me on more of my weekend trips going forward, we planned to go backpacking into The Flat Tops together over this extended holiday weekend. Although we had originally set out to go on a loop through the Flat Tops Wilderness, for various reasons we ended up altering our plans and only doing an overnight trip up to the Marvine Lakes this time. In hindsight, that’s probably all we should have planned to do in the first place for our first backpacking trip back into the mountains. We left home early on Saturday morning, made our way over to Meeker and then followed the Flat Tops Trail along the White River to the Marvine Trailhead where we shouldered our packs and started hiking up the Marvine Trail.

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The Sculptured Earth: End of Trails in The Maze

Lost in The Maze III | Friday – Monday, March 31 – April 3, 2023

After spending the past couple years working to hike all of the trails in Canyonlands National Park and completing the ones in The Needles and Island in the Sky districts in 2018 and 2019, I turned my attention to my remaining trails in The Maze, but it’s taken me a bit longer to hike them all since it’s not quite as easy to get over there for a quick weekend trip. Last spring I had hiked most of the remaining trails from the Land of Standing Rocks with my friends Dave and Jared, but we did not have the time to make it down into lower Horse Canyon on that trip, which was now my only trail left on this official map that I’ve been using to keep track, and also my final trail left in all of Canyonlands! After that trip I made it my goal to hike into lower Horse Canyon this spring, so I booked a backpacking permit back in November and invited my friend Jackson to come along.