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Howard Fork: Blixt Trail to Oscars Pass

Telluride Trails | Friday – Saturday, September 18-19, 2026

I was originally planning to spend this entire weekend celebrating the 250th anniversary of the Dominguez – Escalante Expedition, but when the weather forecast for Saturday was looking too wet for some of the backcountry roads I would need to drive, I decided at the last minute to delay my journey by a day and took Monday off from work. Surprisingly, the weather forecast was looking drier on Saturday morning in the San Juan Mountains, so I decided to squeeze in another high-country hike this season while I still could and planned to hike up the Blixt Trail from the Howard Fork to Oscars Pass and a little beyond. I left from work on Friday afternoon and made my way over the Dallas Divide and up the San Miguel River to the Ophir Pass Road in the Howard Fork where I found a campsite for the night.

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Calico Peak in the Rico Mountains

Friday – Saturday, August 14-15, 2026

This weekend Diane and I were going to be spending most of our time visiting her friends who live along the Dolores River near Dolores and I was hoping that we would be able to squeeze in a short hike in the Rico Mountains on our way there. Although I typically try to avoid doing very many repeat hikes, back when I summited a few 12ers along the Calico Trail in 2020 I knew that I would someday want to come back to Calico Peak again with Diane and this seemed like a perfect opportunity to do that. It would also be a nice hike in remembrance of Tellico, our calico cat that passed away over three years ago who was known as Rico.

Telluride Trails: Sneffels Highline Trail & Mystic Falls

Friday & Saturday, August 15-16, 2025

Since Diane and I are leaving on Tuesday afternoon to spend the rest of the week up in Wyoming, I needed to be home on Sunday to get prepared for the upcoming trip. Still, I wanted to get out hiking in the mountains this weekend and decided to head on down to Telluride after work on Friday so I could hike the Sneffels Highline Trail on Saturday morning. It’s been quite a while since I last hiked in the Mount Sneffels Wilderness and I was looking forward to returning. Although it seems that the monsoon has been pretty nonexistent around here this season, according to the forecast it looked like stormy weather was going to back this weekend and I might have to work around some wet weather- I was just hoping it wouldn’t completely cancel my plans. As I drove down to Telluride on Friday afternoon I started to encounter some rain as I drove through San Miguel Canyon, but it had stopped by the time I reached Telluride and found a place to park in town.

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Bandelier National Monument and the Pajarito Plateau

Lost in the Land of Enchantment | Saturday – Sunday, November 9-10, 2024

We don’t seem to have very good luck when it comes to planning a trip to visit Bandelier National Monument. We have been trying to make it down to Bandelier for the past couple of years and have made plans to go there on at least three separate occasions, but each and every time something has prevented us from making the trip, including park closures due to flash flooding and a wildfire. This year I decided to plan a trip to Bandelier in early November thinking it would be a good time to avoid some of those previous issues, but apparently I was wrong since an early and unusually strong winter storm impacted Bandelier, along with the rest of eastern Colorado and New Mexico, on the day that we were supposed to arrive which closed the park yet again! Talk about bad luck!

Lake Hope via the Lake Fork of the San Miguel River

Saturday & Sunday, September 14-15, 2024

This weekend Diane and I headed up into the San Juan Mountains so we could spend an easy and relaxing overnight camping trip together since we aren’t going to be seeing a lot of each other over the next couple of weeks. We slept in later than usual on Saturday morning before leaving home and then made our way over the Dallas Divide and past Telluride to just shy of Lizard Head Pass where we found a very nice campsite right next to Priest Lake. After setting up camp we continued up the Lake Fork to the trailhead for the Hope Lake Trail, which we planned to hike this afternoon since there were no storms predicted at all for today. This is a hike we’ve been meaning to do ever since we first tried hiking to Lake Hope seven years ago from the South Fork of Mineral Creek on the other side of the pass, but that time we were stopped by a snow drift and had to turn around. We were looking forward to finally making it up to the lake this afternoon!