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Pollock Canyon

New Year’s Eve | Saturday, December 31, 2016

Diane and I headed out to the McInnis Canyons National Conservation Area early this morning for our final hike of 2016. We started our hike from the Rattlesnake Canyon Trailhead near Fruita and hiked up to the top of the Pollock Bench before dropping down a steep trail into Upper Pollock Canyon so we could visit Liberty Bell Arch (Pollock Arch). After checking out the arch from a few different vantage points we decided to continue down Pollock Canyon instead of returning the way had come to create a ten mile loop. While I had hiked all of this route on different trips before, it was all new for Diane.

Christmas in Arches 2016

Christmas Day | Sunday, December 25, 2016

Since it’s become our annual tradition, Diane and I would again spend Christmas Day hiking in Arches National Park. (Previous trip reports from 2015 and 2014.) Overnight it had rained pretty hard in Moab and the forecast was also calling for snow. When we left the hotel before sunrise there was still no snow and the ground. However, as we drove into the park it did start to snow pretty hard and would continue to do so until we reached Landscape Arch in Devil’s Garden. It was very windy and cold out during this hike, and even though the sun would come out later in the morning and the temperature would rise a little, the wind kept blowing making it feel much colder out than it really was.

Island in the Sky

Christmas Weekend in Moab | Saturday. December 24, 2016

On Saturday morning, Diane and I left home and headed down to Moab so we could spend Christmas Day in Arches National Park like we do every year. Since the holiday fell on a weekend this year, we decided to spend the entire weekend around Moab starting with a visit to the Island in the Sky District of Canyonlands National Park on Saturday. While Diane has been to The Maze and Needles Districts a bunch of times with me, she had actually never visited the Island in the Sky, which happens to be the most accessible of the three. We would spend the day visiting most of the overlooks and going on a few short hikes.

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Rifle Arch

Saturday, December 3, 2016

To be honest, our goal for the day was not really to hike to Rifle Arch. Recently, I had learned about a pizza place in New Castle called Hogback Pizza that was supposed to have a good Chicago Style Stuffed Pizza. Since I left the Chicago area I have not been able to find a good stuffed pizza in Colorado and I wanted to see just how good theirs really was. (It turned out to be the best stuffed pizza I have found outside of the Chicago area.) However, I did not want to drive to New Castle just to try some pizza, so I figured we’d find a short hike we could do on our way there and we settled on hiking to Rifle Arch. It was a short 3 mile round-trip hike to the arch but it was much colder outside than we expected it to be and there was a thin layer of snow on the ground. Even though the sky was overcast and I wasn’t able to get any decent photos, it still was a large and impressive arch. I will definitely have to return another day with better photographic conditions.

Crow Canyon Petroglyphs

Sunday, November 27, 2016

After spending the last four days based out of Farmington, New Mexico for the long Thanksgiving Weekend, it was finally time to head back home and get ready to go back to work on Monday morning. But before we left the area, we would spend a few hours hiking in Crow Canyon (Cañon Cuervo) and exploring the extraordinary petroglyphs found there. According to the BLM, Crow Canyon contains the most extensive and well-known collection of 16th – 18th century Navajo petroglyphs in the southwest.

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Tag: snow

Pollock Canyon

Christmas in Arches 2016

Island in the Sky

Rifle Arch

Crow Canyon Petroglyphs