Press "Enter" to skip to content

Tag: clouds

Fall Colors on Owl Creek PassFall Colors on Owl Creek Pass

Fall Colors on Owl Creek Pass

Fall 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.

CONTINUE READINGFall Colors on Owl Creek Pass
2 Comments
Monument CanyonMonument Canyon

Monument Canyon

Sunday, September 15, 2013

On Thursday evening my friend Lisa contacted me to let me know she was taking a last minute trip to the Colorado National Monument this weekend and she wanted to see if I was available to go hiking on Sunday morning. It just so happened that I planned to be home all this weekend and was planning on hiking around the Monument already. We planned to meet up on Sunday morning and hike Monument Canyon from top to bottom. It has been a few years since I hiked the full canyon and I was looking forward to it. We met at the lower trailhead at 8:00am, left her car there and then took my Jeep up to the upper trailhead.

CONTINUE READINGMonument Canyon
Leave a Comment
The IslandThe Island

The Island

Saturday, September 14, 2013

I’ve seen The Island sticking up between Wedding Canyon and Monument Canyon for many years while photographing the Colorado National Monument from the overlooks along Rim Rock Drive. You can see The Island across the canyon in the photo below taken earlier this year from Grand View. For a long time I’ve wanted to hike up there but never seemed to get around to it. I decided to change that this weekend.

CONTINUE READINGThe Island
2 Comments
Mount Antero & Mount PrincetonMount Antero & Mount Princeton

Mount Antero & Mount Princeton

Friday – 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.

CONTINUE READINGMount Antero & Mount Princeton
2 Comments
Stormy San Juan MountainsStormy San Juan Mountains

Stormy San Juan Mountains

Saturday & Sunday, July 27-28, 2013

On Saturday morning I met up with a few friends from the Salt Lake City area that were on their way through town. They would be spending the following week in the San Juan Mountains and I was joining them for the weekend. We had breakfast in Grand Junction together and then made the drive south to Silverton. As soon as we reached Ouray it started to rain, and would continue to rain for much of the weekend until I was on my way home again Sunday evening. When we reached their rental house in Silverton they took some time to unpack and relax, but I headed up to Stony Pass for a little while just before sunset to see if there were any wildflowers still around.

CONTINUE READINGStormy San Juan Mountains
2 Comments