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Christmas in Arches 2017

Christmas Day | Monday, December 25, 2017

On Christmas morning Diane and I got up early, had some breakfast, loaded up the Jeep and then headed into Arches National Park for our annual Christmas tradition of hiking to Landscape Arch to make sure it’s still standing for another year. If you are interested, you can see our previous trips here: [2016] [2015] [2014]. During our drive through the park to the Devil’s Garden Trailhead we caught a pretty nice sunrise from a few overlooks along the way.

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Christmas Moab Weekend

Moab Area Rock Art XXXII | Saturday & Sunday, December 23-24, 2017

Since we were planning on spending our Christmas in Arches National Park like we do every year, we headed over to Moab on Saturday morning so we could spend the entire holiday weekend in the area. Earlier in the week when I was finalizing our rough plans for the trip I was expecting that there would still be none to minimal snow on the ground for our trip because even though there was a winter storm predicted toward the end of the week, I really didn’t think it would affect the area too much. Boy, was I wrong! Well, actually I was right about the Grand Junction area since we didn’t get any snow that stuck around, however, the storm seemed to be centered right over the area surrounding Moab and dumped about 6-10 inches there! We tried to continue on with our original plans at first, but we ended up having to cancel or change some of the hikes since they would have been too dangerous with all the snow and ice on the ground, even with our microspikes. In the end I acted as a tour guide for Diane as we revisited many easily accessible rock art sites that I hadn’t been to in a while.

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The Abajo Mountains

Southern Utah Wanderings | Fall Colors 2017
Monday, October 2, 2017

After spending the weekend in the northern section of Bears Ears National Monument and Canyonlands National Park, we moved a little further south into the Abajo Mountains (Blue Mountains) so we could get a little peak-bagging in on our trip. Since I’ve hiked the highest peaks in the La Sal Mountains and Henry Mountains, I thought it would be nice to complete the trifecta by reaching the summit of Abajo Peak (11,360), the highest point in the Abajo Mountains. This one is a little easier than the others though, since there is a good road all the way up to the top because of all the towers and antennas up there. Shortly after sunrise we broke down our camp located at the base of the Abajo Mountains and drove up the road to the summit. There were some nice views along the way.

Rico – Silverton Trail

Saturday & Sunday, July 8-9, 2017

Diane and I spent the past weekend in the San Juan Mountains near Silverton getting in a little high elevation hiking. We left home early on Saturday morning and drove all the way to the end of the Bandora Mine Road in the South Fork of Mineral Creek and found a campsite shortly before arriving at the trailhead. We quickly setup camp and then started hiking up the Rico – Silverton Trail to it’s intersection with The Colorado Trail. There were a lot of wildflowers along the trail, especially in South Park along with some patches of snow over parts of The Colorado Trail, including a big drift across Rolling Mountain Pass. When we reached the high point of the trail I climbed to the summit of an unnamed 12er that offered great views of Engineer Mountain, Jura Knob and the surrounding area.

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Into the Black Canyon via the Chukar Trail

Saturday, May 20, 2017

This weekend Diane and I stayed closer to home since I was hoping to raft part of the lower Gunnison River on Sunday. I guess this plan worked out well since the battery in my Jeep died on Friday and I had to wait until Saturday morning at 9:00am to pickup a new one and then install it. Because of that delay we left home later in the morning and decided to go on a short hike into the Gunnison Gorge on the Chukar Trail. The Chukar Trail is one of four main trails on the west side of the Gunnison Gorge National Conservation Area that you can take down to the Gunnison River. It’s also the easiest of the four, coming in at 1.1 miles in length (one way) and descending 560 feet. The only other trail I have hiked down before was the Ute Trail a couple of years ago, which is the longest and has the most elevation loss. The delay in the morning actually worked in our favor since we needed to wait a little while for the roads to dry out from the late-season winter storm that had just moved through the area the past couple of days.

Tag: snow

Christmas in Arches 2017

Christmas Moab Weekend

The Abajo Mountains

Rico – Silverton Trail

Into the Black Canyon via the Chukar Trail