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Tag: wildlife

Professor Creek

Mary Jane Canyon
Saturday, May 17, 2014

The hike up Professor Creek through Mary Jane Canyon has been on my to-do list for a few years now. It’s not that far from home for me, but every time I thought about hiking it things never seemed to work out. Either something else came up or it was too cold to hike through the water since I wanted to go on a warm day. Everything finally came together this weekend. Diane and I wanted to stay close to home and the temperatures looked great for a wet hike through a canyon. We left home early in the morning and were the first vehicle in the trailhead parking lot. It was a little cool when we started hiking up the canyon in the morning, but not too cold that I didn’t mind getting my feet wet. As the day grew on and the temperature rose, walking through the water felt great. I stopped quite a few times along the creek for photos of the flowing water and we took our time with this hike.

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San Juan Canyon

The San Juan River | Sand Island to Mexican Hat
Sunday – Wednesday, May 11-14, 2014

We didn’t have any luck in the San Juan River lottery again this year, but I managed to grab an open date on the calendar for a time my friends and I would be able to go during the month of May. Like last year, I was only able to secure a permit from Sand Island to Mexican Hat. It was probably a good thing because I really didn’t want to take too much more time off from work in May since I had already taken a few days for my backpacking trip in Salt Creek Canyon and I have a few other days scheduled off for later in the month.

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Fruita Dugway

Sunday, April 13, 2014

My original plan for the day was to hike the Fruita Dugway trail first thing in the morning.  I woke up early and was out the door well before the sun came up with hopes of catching a nice sunrise from the trail.  I knew that rain was in the forecast for the day but I thought it might hold off for a few more hours after checking the forecast and weather maps before leaving my house.  I was wrong.  As I neared the trailhead just outside of Fruita the skies opened up and a very heavy rain began to fall, which was accompanied by strong winds and a little lightning.  I would not be hiking anywhere local this morning, so I turned around and drove back home.

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Colorado National Monument Traverse

The Face of the Monument | West to East
Saturday, April 12, 2014

Years ago I had the idea of hiking across the face of the Colorado National Monument from one entrance to the other but never seemed to get around to planning the route and following through on the hike because I was usually heading elsewhere for my weekends. A few weeks ago I told Diane about this idea and she was interested in joining me, so I finally got determined to follow through and started planning the route. Much of the route follows existing trails that I have hiked many times in the past, but there were a few segments that I needed to check out and find a few connecting off-trail routes between them. Over the past few weeks I have gone out a few times after work and scouted these segments to come up with the complete route.

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Big Dominguez Canyon

Sunday, December 22, 2013

It has been a little while since I’d gone hiking with Marty, so we made plans to do a local hike on Sunday morning. It has been about a year since I last hiked up Big Dominguez Canyon, so I thought it would be a good time to return. I always seem to hike this trail around Christmas each year…maybe it will become a tradition? Marty had never been up this canyon and was looking forward to checking it out. The temperature was pretty cold when we started our hike from Bridgeport around 9:00am, but as the sun got higher in the sky we started shedding layers and it turned out to be a nice day for a hike.

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