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Petroglyphs of the Waterpocket Fold

Southern Utah Wanderings | Backcountry Petroglyphs of Capitol Reef
Monday – Tuesday, October 1-2, 2018

After spending Sunday evening and Monday morning in Salt Lake City it was finally time to start my annual October trip to southern Utah. I planned on starting off the week by searching for some remote and little-known petroglyphs hidden in the backcountry of Capitol Reef National Park with my friend Jared. On our drive back from Salt Lake City, Diane and I stopped at Dennis‘ house in Price to pick up my Jeep. I had left my Jeep there on Saturday morning so we wouldn’t have to drive both of our vehicles all the way to Salt Lake City and I wouldn’t have to go all the way back home to Grand Junction to get it afterwards. From Price Diane headed back home and I made my way over to Torrey where I would be meeting up with Jared who had already been hiking in Capitol Reef all weekend. One nice thing about driving from Price to Torrey was that it finally gave me an opportunity to drive Highway 72 from I-70 to Loa through the eastern edge of Fishlake National Forest.

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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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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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Stewart Peak from the Cebolla Trail

Saturday & Sunday, August 25-26, 2018

Since our plans for last weekend changed at the last minute we decided to try and hike Stewart Peak in the La Garita Mountains again this weekend. Stewart Peak is actually the highest thirteener in the San Juan Mountains at 13,983 feet and is the second tallest thirteener in Colorado. I believe it was even mistaken as a fourteener at one point in history before a more accurate survey proved that wrong. The weather forecast for the weekend was looking wet and stormy when I checked on Saturday morning, but it also looked like a typical summer monsoon pattern and I was hoping we would have just enough time on Sunday morning to get our climb in before the storms arrived.

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Mount Shavano & Tabeguache Peak

Colorado Adventure 2018 | Thursday & Friday, August 9-10, 2018

After spending the morning hiking around Hancock Pass, I headed down to Pitkin and then made my way over to US 50. My original plans were to head off into the San Juan Mountains for a couple of days before returning home, but I decided to stick around the Sawatch Range for one more day so I could hike to the summit of Mount Shavano and Tabeguache Peak on Friday morning before the weekend crowds arrived. Since I had been hiking in the mountains all week and I was pretty well acclimated by this point, I figured this would be a great time to climb these two fourteeners. So instead of heading south into the Cochetopa Hills, I headed east over Monarch Pass.

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