Trip Reports from the West End and Uncompahgre Plateau including the Dominguez-Escalante and McInnis Canyons National Conservation Areas.
Trip Reports from the Colorado National Monument can be found here: Colorado National Monument Trip Reports
Fall Colors 2014
Thursday, September 25, 2014
After work, Diane and I headed up to Piñon Mesa near Glade Park to see how the fall colors were coming along up there. I had actually only been up to this area once before, many years ago, so I wasn’t too familiar with the area. I have heard that it might be a good spot for fall colors close to home and have wanted to get up there in the fall for many years, so it was time to finally do it. While there was still quite a bit of green around, ...
Sunday, June 15, 2014
Since Diane and I were home today and had no other plans elsewhere, we decided to wake up early and hike The Ribbon Trail before it got too hot out. This is a trail that has been on my to-do list for a while and I was glad to finally be able to check it out. This is a popular mountain biking trail that starts up on Little Park Road and follows large expanses of slickrock along canyon rims and is mostly downhill the whole way. We brought both our vehicles and left one at the ...
Sunday, June 1, 2014
I’ve always wanted to try running the Ruby – Horsethief section of the Colorado River between Loma and Westwater in a day. With the Colorado River running over 35,000cfs this weekend, Jackson and I thought it would be a good time to try it. Unfortunately, it really wasn’t as fun of a day trip as we had hoped. We learned a valuable lesson today; for us, this stretch of river is more enjoyable in an inflatable kayak as an overnight trip at lower water levels than as a day trip in fast water. While we didn’t ...
Saturday, May 10, 2014
This morning Diane and I woke up early and drove up through the Colorado National Monument to reach the Black Ridge Road which we took to the Mee Canyon trailhead. I have wanted to hike to the very large Mee Canyon Alcove for a few years now and it was finally time to do it. The weather forecast was calling for storms in the afternoon, so we got an early start in order to get out of there before the rain moved in since the clay that makes up part of the road can get a ...
Sunday, April 27, 2014
Since I never made it to Flume Creek Canyon yesterday, Diane and I decided to hike it this afternoon together. I wasn’t expecting too much from this hike, but it turned out to be a really beautiful and fun hike. Had we only stayed on the main trail it would have been just another desert hike, but since we decided to get off the main trail and hike in the bottom of the canyon it was much more enjoyable. Getting off the main trail and into the bottom of the wash was a great choice because ...
Monday, February 24, 2014
Here’s a mini trip report from a quick hike Diane and I took after work to visit the Cowboy Hat Tower near Fruita in the Devil’s Canyon Area. The temperatures have been pretty warm here lately so we wanted to get in a short local hike before the sun went down. I can’t wait for longer days to arrive so I can get some longer hikes in after work! These are just a few snapshots I took with my little Canon S110 as the sun was going down for the day.
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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 ...
Sunday, March 10, 2013
Since the weather was bad all over the Colorado Plateau on Saturday I decided to stick around home this weekend. I did manage to get outside on Sunday after the weather cleared up for a hike on the Pollock Bench trail to the Window Rock Tower. This is the main trail that leads to the Rattlesnake Canyon arches, if you don’t have a high clearance vehicle to reach the upper trailhead. Since I have always visited the arches from the upper trailhead, I thought it would be nice to check out this alternate route that I ...
Sunday, October 28, 2012
It was one of those days that I just needed to get out hiking and exploring by myself, so that’s what I set out to do. Last year around Christmas I had planned to hike along the Dolores River near Bedrock but got a severe headache on the drive there and had to turn around and head back home. I hadn’t made it back that way yet, so I thought it would be a good time to try again. After leaving home and driving through Unaweep Canyon to Gateway, I then followed the Dolores River to ...
Sunday & Monday, October 21-22, 2012
Very, very early on Sunday morning Amanda and I headed up to Glade Park to watch the Orionid Meteor Shower from Miracle Rock. Even though we both saw plenty of meteors, I didn’t end up catching any with my camera like I had hoped. Since this was my first real attempt at photographing a meteor shower it’s not a surprise that I came away empty handed, but I’m hopeful that I will do better next time. We both still had a nice time laying on the sandstone watching the sky for meteors until the ...
