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Trappers Lake: Hiking in the ‘Cradle of Wilderness’

Flat Tops Wilderness | Friday – Sunday, July 18-20, 2025

This weekend I set out to finish what I had hoped to accomplish during the last weekend in June by heading up into the Flat Tops Wilderness to hike a few of the trails that surround Trappers Lake in this ‘Cradle of Wilderness.’ I had actually planned to go on this trip late last month but during the drive between Rifle and Meeker I had some issues with my Jeep and ended up having to return home, which not only ruined my weekend plans but was also the last straw with my Jeep and part of the reason I am now driving a 4Runner. This time I left after work on Friday and had no issues with the drive to Trappers Lake. Since all my hiking was planned around Trappers Lake and dispersed camping is not allowed in the immediate area, I grabbed an open campsite at the Himes Peak Campground which is right along the North Fork of the White River and only a few of the sites were occupied, which was nice. With my campsite secured for the weekend I continued down the road to the Scotts Lake Trailhead and hiked down to the shore of Trappers Lake.

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Sylvan Lake: Hardscrabble Mountain to Fulford Cave

Wednesday – Friday, August 14-16, 2024

This week I left after work on Wednesday afternoon and headed east on I-70 towards Eagle so I could spend Thursday and Friday attending the annual GIS Colorado Summer Meetup, which was being held at the Sylvan Lake State Park campground this year. I exited from the interstate at Gypsum and followed the road along Gypsum Creek around Hardscrabble Mountain below the edge of the Red Table Mountain as I hoped to take the backroads to Sylvan Lake, but when I was only a few miles away I ran into wet roads that were slick with mud and had to turn back and go around the long way through Eagle. I haven’t had good luck with the slick muddy roads in this area in the past, so I didn’t want to take any chances! Here are some photos from a few days spent at the Elk Run Campground next to Sylvan Lake.

Delano Peak: Top of the Tushar Mountains

Friday & Saturday, July 8-9, 2022

This weekend I was going to be travelling all the way to San Diego to spend the following week at the ESRI User Conference for work, and figured this would be a great opportunity for me to hike some peaks along the way if I drove instead of flying, so that’s what I made plans to do. I left from work on Friday afternoon and started my long drive west into Utah, though I wouldn’t be going too far this first day. It was very windy out this afternoon which killed my fuel mileage and I just barely made it to Richfield to fill up my gas tank and get some dinner. My first stop along the way was going to be the Tushar Mountains, which I have driven around numerous times before, but never actually been into, so I was looking forward to checking them out for the first time. I figured a good introduction to the range would be to climb Delano Peak, which is the highest peak in the range at 12,169 feet and is also the Highpoint for Beaver & Piute Counties.

River Flowing from the Sunrise: The San Juan River

Friday – Monday, May 10-13, 2019

Over the years I have floated the San Juan River between Sand Island and Mexican Hat a couple of times with a small group of friends and we almost always have had a great time on this stretch of the river. I say ‘almost always‘ because the temperature was way too hot out during our last trip in 2017 and the water was moving very fast which turned out to be a bad combination for us. We ended up cutting that trip a day short and heading home early. After taking last year off for a Labyrinth Canyon trip, we decided to get a permit for the San Juan again this year to make up for that last trip. This year I was hoping for much better weather since we were going in May again, but I was still a little worried when we drove down to Bluff on Friday afternoon through rain storms and cold temperatures even though the forecast for the rest of the weekend was looking good. I certainly had my fingers crossed and hoped that the rainbow I saw as we drove over White Mesa was a good sign! And for anyone wondering, River Flowing from the Sunrise is a translation of the Ute name for the San Juan River, and I think it’s a pretty fitting one.

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Tag: beaver

Trappers Lake: Hiking in the ‘Cradle of Wilderness’

Sylvan Lake: Hardscrabble Mountain to Fulford Cave

Delano Peak: Top of the Tushar Mountains

River Flowing from the Sunrise: The San Juan River