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Wind River Country and the Absaroka Range

Encircling the Wind River Range: Rock Art of the Wind River & Bighorn Basin
Tuesday – Sunday, August 15-20, 2023

After spending the past three days on the Ruby – Horsethief section of the Colorado River it was time for our biennial return to the Wind River Range in Wyoming to begin. Ever since our first trip in 2017 to see the Great American Eclipse, we’ve made it our goal to try and return every other year, which so far we have been able to keep up. Although we have typically gone on a longer backpacking trip during each visit, this year I was more interested in visiting some rock art sites near the Wind River and in the Bighorn Basin that I’ve wanted to see for a long time. So with limited time preventing a longer backpacking trip, we instead looked into going on some shorter day hikes and even branched out into visiting the nearby Absaroka Range for the first time.

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The Ribbon Trail to White Rocks

Colorado National Monument Traverse V
Easter | Sunday, April 1, 2018

This weekend Diane and I stayed close to home so we could go on our annual Colorado National Monument Traverse on Sunday. This yearly hike has sort of become a tradition for us where we plan a longer hike through the Colorado National Monument by combining existing trails and off-trail routes. This is the fifth year we have planned a hike like this and this time I wanted to do something on the east side of the Monument that included No Thoroughfare Canyon. If you are interested in checking out our previous traverses, you can find links to those trip reports here: Traverses of the Colorado National Monument

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Gold Star Evening

Monday, May 22, 2017

I’ve been wanting to photograph sunset from Gold Star Canyon in the Colorado National Monument for a while now, but every time I think about heading up that way it seems the sky doesn’t want to cooperate with me. Late this evening the sky was looking good for the possibility of a nice sunset, so I headed over to the White Rocks Trailhead and hiked up into Gold Star Canyon. Unfortunately, as I was hiking into the canyon more clouds started to build over the valley and my hopes for a nice sunset never really materialized. While I was waiting around I found out that the biting gnats are now out for the season and they were pretty annoying. I stuck around until about 30 minutes after the sun had set hoping for some color, but it never really happened aside from a little afterglow. I guess I will have to try again another time.

Little Grand Canyon

San Rafael River Gorge | Friday & Saturday, March 31 – April 1, 2017

Visiting the Little Grand Canyon in the heart of the northern San Rafael Swell has been something I have wanted to do for a long time. I’ve looked down into the gorge from the edge of The Wedge may times before and thought to myself that I needed to get down there. I had always dismissed going there on a day-hike because of it’s length and figured I would be able to catch the San Rafael River at the right time so I could take my inflatable kayak through the canyon. That has obviously never happened yet which is why I put this trip off for so long. Since there is a long local hike near my home that I’ve been thinking about doing this spring, I thought that hiking the Little Grand Canyon would be a good test to see if I was going to be up for it or not, so I finally went for it.

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Ute Canyon to White Rocks

Colorado National Monument Traverse IV
Saturday, February 25, 2017

This year I decided to plan our annual Colorado National Monument Traverse hike a little earlier than usual since our upcoming wedding and honeymoon are going to be taking over much of the month of March, and I wasn’t sure if we’d have time to fit it into our busy schedule later this spring. I also wanted to keep the hike a little shorter than usual since it would only be a day hike and we would be going to a concert in the evening.