// Adventures and Photography from the Colorado Plateau, Rocky Mountains & Beyond
Saturday, December 19, 2015
This morning I went for a short hike in the Devil’s Canyon section of the McInnis Canyons National Conservation Area just outside of Fruita and snapped a couple of photos that I will share below. The temperature was cold and the ground was frozen but there was less snow on the trails than I thought there would be.
Leave a CommentThanksgiving | Thursday, November 26, 2015
For Thanksgiving Diane and I had originally planned to hike a seven mile loop through Devil’s Canyon in the morning. However, since Diane had forgotten her rain jacket at home and there were rain and snow storms scattered throughout the valley, we decided to just stick to the frontcountry trails near the mouth of Devil’s Canyon in case we needed to make a quick retreat back to my Jeep at the trailhead. We would encounter a few snowstorms throughout the morning, but they didn’t get us very wet. Since the clouds and light were looking pretty nice this morning we headed over to the Cowboy Hat Tower first so I could get a few photos of this geologic feature.
Leave a CommentSunday, October 25, 2015
Our original plan for today was to visit my geocache on Winter Camp Ridge just outside of Arches National Park and then explore a little more of Lost Spring Canyon. We left home later in the morning and made our way into Utah to the Yellow Cat Road, however we were quickly stopped by slippery mud, quicksand and large cutbanks at a crossing of Pinto Wash from the recent heavy rain. Without a good place to winch from in the area, we decided it was best to turn around and come back another time after the area had more time to dry out. It was time to find something else to do.
6 CommentsLiberty Bell Arch
Sunday, May 10, 2015
After spending the last two weekends backpacking in Grand Gulch I needed to spend a more relaxing weekend at home so I could start preparing for an upcoming trip on the San Juan River later this week. It had rained on and off all day on Saturday, but it looked like things might start finally clearing up on Sunday morning and I wanted to get out for at least one local hike this weekend. A few weeks back when I had hiked into the East Fork of Pollock Canyon I had run into Steve Obser, another local hiker, who had mentioned a nice arch in the upper section of the canyon that is known as Liberty Bell Arch (I have recently seen this same arch called Pollock Arch and Picture Window Arch). I thought that this arch might make for a nice destination this morning, so I decided to hike into the upper Pollock Canyon for a little exploring. After looking at my maps, it looked like hiking up the trail through Flume Creek Canyon and then crossing over the saddle at the far end of the Pollock Bench would be the shortest route into the upper canyon, so that’s the way I went. It was a pretty straight-forward hike and got me where I wanted to go, though I’m not really sure if it saved me much distance or elevation gain. I ended up hiking about 9.3 miles round trip this morning.
4 CommentsSunday, April 19, 2015
This morning I decided to sleep in a little later since I was up early on Saturday morning to photograph the sunrise at the Colorado National Monument. After breakfast, Diane and I drove over to Rabbit Valley near the state line for an afternoon hike on the Rabbit’s Ear Trail. This is a nice trail that climbs to the top of Rabbit’s Ear Mesa and then loops around the rim with expansive views over Ruby Canyon of the Colorado River and the rest of the McInnis Canyons National Conservation Area. Since we were out hiking under harsh mid-afternoon light I didn’t take many photos, but I will definitely be returning in the future to make some better images from this location. Here are a couple of snapshots from our hike…
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