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Tag: north mountain

South San Juan Sojourn: Conejos Peak & Summit Peak

South San Juan Wilderness | Thursday – Saturday, August 20-22, 2026

It’s been just over three years since my last visit to the South San Juan Mountains and I’ve been wanting to get back there for quite a while. Initially, I was going to attend the annual GIS Colorado Summer Meetup this week, which was supposed to be held at the Big Meadows Campground along the western edge of the Weminuche Wilderness, and then I was planning to spend the remainder of the weekend hiking in the South San Juans, but that event was recently cancelled. Since I had really been looking forward to returning to the South San Juans, I decided to carry on with my plans and started driving that way early on Thursday morning. I took the scenic route along the Silver Thread Scenic Byway through Lake City and Creede to South Fork and then followed the Lake Fork of the Rio Grande to the Big Meadows Reservoir and Shaw Lake so I could at least check them out, even though I wouldn’t be spending any time in that area now.

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Hueco Tanks State Park & Historic Site

Wednesday – Thursday, November 13-14, 2024

After leaving Carlsbad Caverns on Wednesday and driving into the state of Texas for the very first time, we made our way west towards El Paso and detoured into the Hueco Mountains later in the day where we made a quick stop at Hueco Tanks State Park & Historic Site to verify that their campground was actually closed this night like their website had stated, and it was. Since we couldn’t camp in the park and there weren’t any public lands nearby, we drove a few miles to the east and found a site to setup our tent just before sunset at the Gleatherland Ranch Campground, which was mostly empty this evening. We ate dinner as the temperature dropped rather quickly, read in the tent for a while and then went to bed early. This would be our first bag night in Texas, too!

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South San Juan Mountains from Elwood Pass

Friday – Monday, July 28 – 31, 2023

After spending the last two days around the Animas River Valley between Coal Bank Pass and Durango, I decided to spend the next couple of days further south and east in a distant part of the San Juan Mountains that I don’t get around to visiting very often. I’ve definitely been long overdue for another visit to the South San Juan Mountains between Wolf Creek Pass and the New Mexico state line and figured that this would be a good opportunity to get back since it wasn’t too much further away. After the GIS Colorado Summer Meetup concluded late in the morning on Friday I packed up my Jeep and made my way over to Pagosa Springs to continue on with the next leg of the trip.

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