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Colorado National Monument TraverseColorado National Monument Traverse

Colorado National Monument Traverse

The Face of the Monument | West to East
Saturday, April 12, 2014

Years ago I had the idea of hiking across the face of the Colorado National Monument from one entrance to the other but never seemed to get around to planning the route and following through on the hike because I was usually heading elsewhere for my weekends. A few weeks ago I told Diane about this idea and she was interested in joining me, so I finally got determined to follow through and started planning the route. Much of the route follows existing trails that I have hiked many times in the past, but there were a few segments that I needed to check out and find a few connecting off-trail routes between them. Over the past few weeks I have gone out a few times after work and scouted these segments to come up with the complete route.

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Ute Canyon TrailUte Canyon Trail

Ute Canyon Trail

Sunday, March 23, 2014

After a rainy Saturday, Diane and I headed up to the Colorado National Monument on Sunday to get in a little hiking close to home. It’s been a few years since I’ve hiked down Ute Canyon so we decided to make that our destination for the day. Since I wanted to hike the whole trail from top to bottom we left my Jeep at the lower trailhead and then drove up to the upper trailhead in Diane’s car. When we dropped off my Jeep at the Wildwood Trailhead we found the parking lot full and had to park along the road. There were a lot of people hiking up to Liberty Cap today and I’m glad we weren’t one of them. We didn’t see anyone else in Ute Canyon all afternoon, which was nice.

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Canyon Rim TrailCanyon Rim Trail

Canyon Rim Trail

Monday, March 10, 2014

This evening Diane and I went on a short last-minute hike after work in the Colorado National Monument since the weather was so nice out. We ended up along the Canyon Rim Trail and enjoyed the views across Wedding Canyon as the sun sunk low in the sky behind a thin layer of clouds. Here’s a few photos I took along the way…

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Colorado National Monument InversionMonument Inversion

Colorado National Monument Inversion

Saturday, January 26, 2013

On Saturday morning I slept in a little later than usual. A winter storm moved into the area overnight and when I looked outside towards the Colorado National Monument I could see that the humidity from the storm caused the inversion layer over the valley to thicken. I quickly got dressed and drove up to the Monument. I was planning on a short trip up there to hopefully get a couple of decent photos, but I ended up spending over 5 hours up there!

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