// Adventures and Photography from the Colorado Plateau, Rocky Mountains & Beyond
Vermilion Cliffs National Monument
Saturday, January 27, 2018
Late last year I realized that 2017 was going to be the first year since 2011 that I hadn’t made it down to visit the Vermilion Cliffs National Monument. My last visit to the area was in March of 2016, and to be honest, I was kind of missing the colorful sandstone of the Paria Plateau.
21 CommentsNew Year’s Day | Monday, January 1, 2018
After going on my last hike of 2017 the previous day, it was now time for me to go on my very first hike of 2018! I woke up early on Monday morning and drove over to the Lower Monument Canyon Trailhead in the Colorado National Monument so I could hike the Wedding Canyon Loop. This is one of my favorite hikes in the Monument and one I recommend to anyone who asks me about hiking in the area. Hiking this loop on New year’s Day has become somewhat of a tradition for me the past couple of years, and I wanted to keep that up. Plus, it’s just a great way to start off the new year close to home!
2 CommentsChristmas 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.
4 CommentsFriday & Saturday, December 1-2, 2017
A few years back I came across an old photo of some pictographs I was unfamiliar with called the Sky Faces. Since I’ve enjoyed visiting many of the other ‘Faces Motif’ pictographs in the Canyonlands region (Four Faces, Five Faces, Thirteen Faces, etc.), I decided to try and track them down. It took me a few years, but I was finally able to figure out their location earlier this year and wanted to try and get to them before the year was over. Back in October Jared and I tried to hike to them, but we were unable to reach them via the route we took. With warmer weather sticking around this weekend I decided to head down to Canyonlands National Park after work on Friday and go on a long hike to reach the pictographs on Saturday. I ended up spending Friday night just outside the park in Bears Ears National Monument, which may have been the last time? Looking at the new maps of the Monument, I guess I would have been camped in what is now going to be the Indian Creek National Monument.
5 CommentsSouthern Utah Wanderings | Northern Bears Ears
Friday – Sunday, September 29 – October 1, 2017
This year for my annual weeklong trip into southern Utah during the first week of October I met up with Jared and we spent most of the week exploring, hiking, four-wheeling, camping, backpacking, peak-bagging and photographing within Bears Ears National Monument. The first few days of our trip were spent in the northern part of the Bears Ears between Canyonlands National Park and Lockhart Basin. (We did a little hiking into Canyonlands, too.) We were hoping to visit a few new pictograph panels and maybe find some ruins, but we ran into some issue that prevented us from reaching the rock art sites we were looking for this time, so we will definitely have to come back and try again another time. Here are some photos from the first three days of the trip.
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