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Christmas in Arches 2015Christmas in Arches 2015

Christmas in Arches 2015

Christmas Day | Friday, December 25, 2015

The early morning drive from Grand Junction to Arches National Park on Christmas morning was a bit slow since it had started to snow overnight and would continue to do so throughout the day. I wasn’t feeling 100% after coming down with a cold earlier in the week, so we decided to head straight to the Devil’s Garden for our annual Christmas hike to Landscape Arch to make sure that it is still standing after another year. I’ve hiked this trail in the winter for the past 8 years but this time it was the slipperiest I have ever seen it! After slipping and falling twice on the sheet of ice that was hidden beneath the fresh powder we put on our microspikes which made the rest of the hike much easier. After our visit to Landscape Arch we decided to visit Crystal Arch nearby which neither of us had been to before. It was nice to get off the main trail and have this arch all to ourselves. While we were visiting Crystal Arch started to snow pretty hard creating whiteout conditions for our hike back to the trailhead.

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Devil’s Canyon Trails IIDevil’s Canyon Trails II

Devil’s Canyon Trails II

Sunday, December 20, 2015

Since I haven’t been travelling much lately (and I hope to fix that next weekend with a Christmas weekend trip to Moab), I have been trying to get out to hike more of the local trails we have here in the Grand Valley the past couple of weeks. This morning Diane and I headed back to the Devil’s Canyon trail system in the McInnis Canyons National Conservation Area and hiked another five mile loop. Here are a couple of pictures I snapped along the way.

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Devil’s Canyon FrontcountryDevil's Canyon Frontcountry

Devil’s Canyon Frontcountry

Thanksgiving | Thursday, November 26, 2015

For Thanksgiving Diane and I had originally planned to hike a seven mile loop through Devil’s Canyon in the morning. However, since Diane had forgotten her rain jacket at home and there were rain and snow storms scattered throughout the valley, we decided to just stick to the frontcountry trails near the mouth of Devil’s Canyon in case we needed to make a quick retreat back to my Jeep at the trailhead. We would encounter a few snowstorms throughout the morning, but they didn’t get us very wet. Since the clouds and light were looking pretty nice this morning we headed over to the Cowboy Hat Tower first so I could get a few photos of this geologic feature.

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Ute Canyon Dinosaur TracksUte Canyon Dinosaur Tracks

Ute Canyon Dinosaur Tracks

Friday & Saturday, November 13-14, 2015

Our objective on Saturday was to go for a hike in the Colorado National Monument in search of a couple of small dinosaur tracks hidden on a large boulder in Ute Canyon. We did manage to find the tracks we were looking for, but before we get into that part of the trip report here are a couple of photos I took on Friday evening along the rim of Monument Canyon in the west side of the Monument.

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