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Tag: yellow mountain

Lake Hope via the Lake Fork of the San Miguel River

Saturday & Sunday, September 14-15, 2024

This weekend Diane and I headed up into the San Juan Mountains so we could spend an easy and relaxing overnight camping trip together since we aren’t going to be seeing a lot of each other over the next couple of weeks. We slept in later than usual on Saturday morning before leaving home and then made our way over the Dallas Divide and past Telluride to just shy of Lizard Head Pass where we found a very nice campsite right next to Priest Lake. After setting up camp we continued up the Lake Fork to the trailhead for the Hope Lake Trail, which we planned to hike this afternoon since there were no storms predicted at all for today. This is a hike we’ve been meaning to do ever since we first tried hiking to Lake Hope seven years ago from the South Fork of Mineral Creek on the other side of the pass, but that time we were stopped by a snow drift and had to turn around. We were looking forward to finally making it up to the lake this afternoon!

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Woods Lake, Sunshine Mesa & Lizard Head Pass

Friday, July 7, 2023

Well, this weekend certainly did not go as I would have liked it to. I had planned to spend the entire weekend hiking new trails and summits in the Rico Mountains and Lizard Head Wilderness, like I’ve been doing for the past couple of years, but on Friday evening I started feeling pretty ill and ended up coming home very late that night and staying in for the rest of the weekend. I did make a couple short detours to hike and explore on my way to find a campsite Friday afternoon, so here are a couple of the photos I took along the way.

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The Rico Mountains & Lizard Head Wilderness

Independence Day Weekend | Friday – Sunday, July 1-3, 2022

This year for the extended Fourth of July holiday weekend I decided to head back to the same area I did last year and returned to the Rico Mountains so I could hike to a couple more twelve-thousand foot peaks along the Calico Trail. I left from work on Friday afternoon and made my way south to the San Juan Mountains via the Dallas Divide and Lizard Head Pass. I drove through a bit of rain on and off from Ridgeway until I reached Lizard Head Pass, where I found the mountain-tops hidden in the clouds. After following the headwaters of the Dolores River for a bit, I turned off onto the Taylor Creek Road and drove up onto Taylor Mesa in search of campsite for the night. I found a pretty nice campsite on the ridge between Stoner Creek and Priest Gulch with a great view of the nearby Rico Mountains and the distant La Plata Mountains, but the mosquitoes were pretty terrible! After a colorful sunset I went to bed early so I could get an early start on Saturday morning.

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