// Adventures and Photography from the Colorado Plateau, Rocky Mountains & Beyond
Fall Colors 2013
Saturday, October 5, 2013
After spending a cold night camping near Vista Point along Owl Creek Pass Road, I was up in the darkness taking down my camp. The temperature was in the upper teens, but surprisingly it didn’t feel that cold when I got out of my sleeping bag. When my camp was loaded into the Jeep I drove through Ridgway over to the Dallas Divide so I could catch the sunrise on the Sneffels Range.
2 CommentsFall Colors 2013
Friday, October 4, 2013
I left work on Friday and headed south to the San Juan Mountains near Ridgway to start my annual week-long October trip. Normally, I spend this week in the desert of southern Utah and northern Arizona, but this year I decided to spend the first weekend chasing fall colors in the San Juan Mountains since the colors were a little late this year. After a quick dinner stop in Montrose I was soon driving up Owl Creek Pass as a winter storm moved through the area. Many of the aspen trees still seemed to be pretty green for this time of the year, but with the fresh snow on the ground and tress, low clouds above and colorful oaks, there were plenty of beautiful fall scenes.
2 CommentsFriday – Sunday, August 23-25, 2013
One of my goals this year was to summit four new 14ers, and after this trip (plus my weekend in early July) I have met it. I’ve currently completed ten 14ers and hope to summit five more next year. This trip started out on a sour note. After leaving work on Friday afternoon and heading east on I-70, I got stopped in traffic because of flooding near Parachute. After waiting for over an hour, the state patrol turned us around near De Beque and said that the highway would be closed for about six hours. At this point my options were to cancel the trip or take a different route into the mountains and not arrive until much later at night than I had hoped. I didn’t want to cancel the trip, so I drove back to the Grand Valley and then took US 50 through Delta, Montrose and Gunnison.
2 CommentsFriday – Sunday, July 5-7, 2013
My plans this weekend were to drive over to the Tenmile – Mosquito Range so that I could climb at least one 14er and hopefully a second one, too. I left work on Friday and headed east. A few hours later I had my campsite setup along Fourmile Creek just outside of Fairplay. I had a little time before dark, so I decided to drive up to the trailhead for Mount Sherman and check it out. Mount Sherman was my planned hike on Saturday morning.
Leave a CommentSand Island to Mexican Hat
Wednesday – Friday, May 8-10, 2013
I have wanted to get on the San Juan River for a while, but because of the permit system in place I have never really tried. This year I decided it was finally time to try and secure a permit for myself and a few friends from work. Unfortunately, we didn’t manage to get any permits from the original lottery. However, I was able to grab an opening at a later date. We had originally wanted to try and do the whole stretch of the San Juan from Sand Island to the Clay Hills Crossing, but the permit we were able to get only let us go to Mexican Hat on this trip.
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