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Grand Mesa Fall Colors 2018

Fall Colors 2018 | Sunday, September 16, 2018

After a quick trip up to Imogene Pass in the San Juan Mountains on Saturday morning I wasn’t planning on going anywhere else for the rest of the weekend. However, when I saw that the fall colors were looking pretty good this early in the season I figured it would be worth it to take a quick drive up onto the Grand Mesa later on Sunday afternoon to catch the sunset. It turned out to be a pretty good decision! Originally, I was planning on heading up to the Grand Mesa after work one day during the last week of September like I usually do, but now I’m sure if I had waited until then it probably would have been way too late! While there were still plenty of green trees up there, and there were also groups of trees that had already dropped most of their leaves, I thought there was a really good mix of colors that looked nice. I also saw more reds and oranges than I usually do up in this area. Here are a few photos from our evening on the Grand Mesa.

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Imogene Pass Peaks

Friday & Saturday, September 14-15, 2018

This weekend I decided to stay close to home and only go out for one night since I needed to spend some time getting prepared for an upcoming river trip that I’m leaving for in a few days. I ended up going on an quick overnighter into the San Juan Mountains between Ouray and Telluride so I could hike to the summit of a few peaks near Imogene Pass. It’s actually been a few years since the last time I drove up to Imogene Pass, so I was looking forward to checking it out again. I left after work on Friday, stopped for a quick dinner in Delta and ended up making it to the top of Imogene Pass shortly before sunset. During my drive up to the pass I did have to wait for a group of 18 Jeeps to pass me since I guess the Jeep Jamboree was going on this weekend. I would also have to wait for another large Jeep Jamboree group on my way back down on Saturday. From the pass I watched and photographed the sunset before driving back down into Imogene Basin and finding a spot to camp for the night.

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Cinnamon Pass Peaks & Anvil Mountain

Friday – Sunday, September 7-9, 2018

After visiting the High Uintas Wilderness for the first time last weekend, I figured I’d stay a little closer to home this weekend to spend some quality time back in the San Juan Mountains. The summer season in the mountains is coming to an end soon and I’ll be heading off to explore the Colorado Plateau on my weekends in just a few short weeks. Midddle to late September is actually my favorite time to hike in the mountains since they are less crowded after Labor Day, the alpine tundra is already changing color, the aspen trees usually start to change color, and there are less worries about afternoon thunderstorms since the monsoon season is coming to an end. It’s a great time of the year to get in some peak bagging! Last September I headed up to Engineer Pass for a little hiking around this time of the year, so I thought I would return to the area and hit up Cinnamon Pass this time. Although I hiked to Cinnamon Mountain from the pass a few years ago, there were still a couple of peaks nearby that I hadn’t got to yet.

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Top of Utah: Kings Peak via Henrys Fork

Labor Day Weekend | Thursday – Sunday, August 30 – September 2, 2018

Last August when Diane and I were driving home through the eastern edge of the Uinta Mountains from our first backpacking trip in the Wind River Range in Wyoming, I mentioned that we needed to go on a backpacking trip into the High Uintas Wilderness in 2018, so I put it on our calendar for Labor Day weekend when I got back home. Fast forward a few months and it was time to start figuring out more specific plans for the trip. After looking at maps and our options, I figured that we might as well go all out and hike to the summit of Kings Peak which is the highest point in Utah. There are a couple of ways to get there, but Henrys Fork looked like the easiest and most popular way to go, so we thought it would be a good introduction to hiking in the High Uintas. Since I knew this was going to be a popular spot, especially during a holiday weekend, we took off Friday from work in hopes of getting a little bit of a head start. We left right after work on Thursday and drove over Douglas Pass and through the Book Cliffs to Vernal, where we stopped for a quick dinner. We almost hit a deer as we were driving through Manila, but other than that the drive was pretty uneventful. We arrived at the Henrys Fork Trailhead in the dark around 10:00pm and found a great spot to camp nearby. We quickly setup our tent and went right to bed. The sky was very clear and the stars and milky way were bright tonight!

Sultan Mountain & Grand Turk

Saturday & Sunday, August 18-19, 2018

Originally, Diane and I were planning to climb Stewart Peak in the La Garita Mountains together this weekend, but she wasn’t feeling well when we got up on Saturday morning, so I changed plans and headed down toward Silverton by myself instead. When we woke up on Saturday it was actually raining pretty good in Grand Junction which is something we haven’t seen much of in quite a while! I checked the weather in the mountains and found out that it was storming there as well, but the storms were expected to wind down later in the day and Sunday was supposed to be pretty dry. Since I had to wait for the storms to die down a bit, I left home later in the morning and then made my way to Red Mountain Pass where I decided to stop and hike up into Spirit Gulch on an old mining road that is no longer open to vehicles.

Category: Exploring

Grand Mesa Fall Colors 2018

Imogene Pass Peaks

Cinnamon Pass Peaks & Anvil Mountain

Top of Utah: Kings Peak via Henrys Fork

Sultan Mountain & Grand Turk