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The Needles: Wandering a Wilderness of Stone

Canyonlands National Park | Friday – Sunday, March 6-8, 2026

Since I’ve already spent some time in both the Island in the Sky and The Maze districts of Canyonlands National Park this year, I figured this weekend would be the perfect opportunity for me to get back into The Needles so I could knock out all three districts by early March. It’s hard to believe that it’s already been an entire year since I was last in The Needles when Diane and I went backpacking into Chesler Park last March, so I was itching to get back! This time I didn’t really have any set destinations in mind when I left from work on Friday afternoon, I just knew that I wanted to wander off trail across some sandstone benches and through some canyons to see what I could find along the way. I was wanting to make it to the park before sunset since there had been winter storms across the Colorado Plateau all day and I was hoping to catch the storm clearing out at sunset.

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Hueco Tanks State Park & Historic Site

Wednesday – Thursday, November 13-14, 2024

After leaving Carlsbad Caverns on Wednesday and driving into the state of Texas for the very first time, we made our way west towards El Paso and detoured into the Hueco Mountains later in the day where we made a quick stop at Hueco Tanks State Park & Historic Site to verify that their campground was actually closed this night like their website had stated, and it was. Since we couldn’t camp in the park and there wasn’t any public lands nearby, we drove a few miles to the east and found a site to setup our tent just before sunset at the Gleatherland Ranch Campground, which was mostly empty this evening. We ate dinner as the temperature dropped rather quickly, read in the tent for a while and then went to bed early. This would be our first bag night in Texas, too!

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The Summertime Blues: Hiking the Abajo Mountains

Three Directions in the Blue Mountains | Friday – Sunday, August 5-7, 2022

This past week I had been struggling to decide where I wanted to go this weekend as I continually watched the weather forecasts for the mountains since all of them were calling for a large monsoonal surge to enter Colorado which was supposed to create a lot of rain and thunderstorms throughout the high country of the state. On Thursday I decided to look outside of Colorado to the Abajo Mountains, locally known as the Blue Mountains, which had a much milder weather outlook for the weekend, so that’s where I decided to go. As luck would have it, on Friday all the weather forecasters changed their tune about the stormy weather in Colorado for the weekend, but by then I had already set my mind on heading up into the Abajos, plus it has been a while since I did any hiking in this small laccolithic range, so now I was looking forward to getting back!

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The Search for the Sky Faces

Friday & 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.

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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.

Tag: west mountain

The Needles: Wandering a Wilderness of Stone

Hueco Tanks State Park & Historic Site

The Summertime Blues: Hiking the Abajo Mountains

The Search for the Sky Faces

The Abajo Mountains