Press "Enter" to skip to content

Tag: snow

Bears Ears Lost

Thursday – Sunday, March 15-18, 2018

This weekend I headed down to Cedar Mesa and the Bears Ears area to meet up with my friend Alan for a weekend of hiking. I drove down a little early so I could pick up my Annual Cedar Mesa Hiking Pass from the Kane Gulch Ranger Station and then did a little hiking and exploring on my own before I met up with Alan. Sometimes you just need to get out and wander through a canyon by yourself! Last year all of the area we explored would have been located within Bears Ears National Monument, but after last month I’m pretty sure that everywhere we went is now outside of the new boundaries. Although, I’m not exactly sure what the status of those changes are and if they are official or not? The weather on Friday and Saturday was very nice, but I ended up having to cut my trip a day short since it started to snow and rain on Sunday morning. We definitely needed the precipitation and I had already had a few nice hikes, so it wasn’t too disappointing. Here are some photos from the weekend.

6 Comments

The Needles

Friday – Sunday, February 23-25, 2018

After spending the previous weekend exploring Cedar Mesa, Diane had to travel to San Diego for work this weekend, so I was on my own. I decided to leave work on Friday and spend the weekend in the Needles District of Canyonlands National Park even though Diane and I would be headed back there in two weeks for our first backpacking trip of the year. If I had to choose just one favorite district of Canyonlands National Park, I think I would have to go with The Needles. This section of Canyonlands has amazing hiking, challenging Jeep trails, beautiful scenery in every direction and plenty of hidden rock art and ruins. The Needles has it all!

3 Comments

The Island In The Sky

Saturday, February 10, 2018

Since I already have plans and permits to spend time in The Needles and The Maze districts of Canyonlands National Park this spring, I thought it would be nice to spend a little quality time on the Island In The Sky, too. I recently realized that I haven’t done very much hiking in this part of the park yet and I really want to start changing that. This time I was not looking to hike all the way down to the White Rim and then climb back up, so I decided to start with the Neck Spring Trail and a few other shorter trails. I’ll definitely be coming back for some longer hikes later this year!

4 Comments

Ouray Ice Festival 2018

Saturday, January 20, 2018

On Saturday I headed down to Ouray, located at the edge of the San Juan Mountains, to attend the 23rd Annual Ouray Ice Festival. Even though I am not an ice climber, or any other kind of climber for that matter, I have been going to this event for a number of years because it’s fun to watch and photograph the ice climbers, plus it’s not too far from home. According to a member of the Board of Directors for the Ouray Ice Park, this year had the highest attendance of any Ouray Ice Festival to date!

4 Comments

An Afternoon at The Monument

Sunday, January 7, 2018

If you saw this post over on my mircoBLOG, you’ll know that my weekend didn’t go quite as planned. Since I came home early on Saturday night I decided to sleep in late on Sunday morning and had no plans to do anything for the rest of the day. However, in the early afternoon I noticed that a winter storm was going to be breaking up over the Grand Valley, so I headed over to the Colorado National Monument to see if I could take some photos. I was hoping there would be some cool atmospherics like during this visit to The Monument (I can’t believe that was almost five years ago!), but that would not happen this time.

Leave a Comment