Press "Enter" to skip to content

Tag: rocky mountains

Coming In Second: Mount Massive

Friday – Saturday, July 6-7, 2018

This weekend I felt it was time for me to attempt my first 14er of the year since the snow had melted of early and the monsoon season hasn’t really picked up yet. After looking at my options I decided to go all out and try to hike to the summit of Mount Massive (14,421) on Saturday morning, which is the second highest peak in Colorado after Mount Elbert which I had already climbed two years ago. I spend Independence Day hiking in the La Sal Mountains to help prepare for the hike by getting a little acclimated to the elevation and making sure I was in good enough shape to give it a try. The hike in the La Sal Mountains went pretty well, although my legs were very sore for a few days afterwards which is very unusual for me. My legs certainly get tired after a big hike, but they’ve never been sore like this before. On Friday afternoon I considered cancelling the trip completely because the weather forecast was predicting early thunderstorms starting around 9:00am on Saturday morning, and even with a very early start I wasn’t sure if I’d be able to reach the summit and get down before they started. In the end, I decided to go anyway and see if I could squeeze the hike into the small window of good weather that was predicted. I figured that maybe I’d even be able to get some nice cloudy photos if the weather wasn’t good for hiking!

4 Comments

Sleepy Cat Peak & The Devils Causeway

A Long Overdue Return to The Flat Tops
Friday – Sunday, June 22-24, 2018

Earlier this year while planning our Memorial Day weekend trip to Dinosaur National Monument, I was scrolling around a map online and it took off on me in the wrong direction and stopped near a mountain called Sleepy Cat Peak (10,853) in the Flat Tops of Colorado. I had never heard of this peak before, but with a name like that I knew we would have to climb it this summer! After looking online for a little bit more information about the peak I found out that it’s actually the 52nd most prominent peak in Colorado with 2,348 feet of prominence. Since this peak is not very high by Colorado standards, we figured it would make a good easy mountain to climb at the beginning of our season this summer to help us start getting back into shape again. Plus, it’s been at least eight years since the last time I visited the Flat Tops, so I’ve been long overdue for a return visit to this area.

7 Comments

Horse Ranch Park Loop

Friday – Saturday, June 15-16, 2018

This turned out to be one of those weekends where nothing seemed to work out as planned. I originally had plans of peak bagging in the Ruby Range near Crested Butte, but when I left work on Friday afternoon I already knew there was a good chance that I was probably going to get rained out by the remnants of Hurricane Bud. This tropical storm was going to be bringing some much needed moisture to the Colorado Plateau and Rocky Mountains over the weekend. The weather forecast was predicting thunderstorms, high winds, heavy rain and even possible flash flooding. Even with the chance of storms high, I decided to head that direction anyway and see if I could at least squeeze in a little hiking or photography before the weather arrived. Little did I know at the time that my biggest problem was going to be road closures and not storms!

8 Comments

Highland Mary Lakes & Verde Lakes

Saturday & Sunday, June 9-10, 2018

This weekend Diane and I decided to go on a very early season backpacking trip into the high country near Silverton. During a normal year we wouldn’t even consider going on a backpacking trip into the mountains until later in June or early in July, but with the low snowpack this year we decided to give it a try much earlier to see how the conditions really were. Also, since it’s still early in the season, the monsoons haven’t started yet and we would be able to camp well above tree line without worrying about storms or lightning. Plus, with Highway 550 closed between Durango and Silverton because of the 416 Fire, we figured the mountains near Silverton wouldn’t be very busy right now and we hoped to find plenty of solitude.

5 Comments

Glenwood Canyon Recreation Trail

Saturday, March 31, 2018

After spending the last seven weekends hiking and backpacking in Utah, I figured it was finally time to take a break and stay closer to home on the western slope of Colorado this weekend. Since I finally got a hitch-mounted bike rack for my Jeep that will carry both of our bikes this past week, I wanted to give it a try this weekend. We haven’t used our bikes in a while and we would like to change that, so we thought a good way to ease back into it would be by taking a nice scenic ride on the Glenwood Canyon Recreation Trail near Glenwood Springs. While I’ve driven through this canyon countless times, hiked to Hanging Lake a few times, and even floated part of the river a couple of times, I had never taken my bike on the paved trail through the canyon before.

1 Comment