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
Sunday, May 9, 2010
I have wanted to check out the arches of Rattlesnake Canyon for quite a while. Today we finally had a chance to head out and hike the trail through Rattlesnake Canyon since we didn’t head out of town this weekend.
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Sunday, April 25, 2010
Since I wasn’t planning on going anywhere with the Jeep today, I decided to get up early and head over to the Kokopelli bike trails near Loma to check out a popular trail named Rustler’s Loop. It was a great 3.5 mile loop with excellent views over Horsethief Canyon and the Colorado River. Here’s a few pictures from along the way….
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Friday, July 3, 2009
Yeah, I ended up spending some more time on the Uncompahgre Plateau today since I wanted to stick close to home.
I started out on Delta and made my way to Escalante Canyon on the Escalante Rim trail. From there I took the Dry Mesa trail up onto the Uncompahgre. When I reached Divide Road my plans were to explore some spur trails off of the main road, but it seems there has been a lot of rain up on the plateau lately because all of the trails were very muddy and slick. I decided to ...
Sunday, June 14, 2009
Amanda had to go into work today so I decided to head up onto the Uncompahgre and finish some trails I have started before and to check out a few new ones. I made a big loop by starting out in Escalante Canyon and following it up onto Love Mesa where I eventually joined Divide Road. I headed down the other side of the plateau through Casto Draw and made my way to Gateway. After fueling up, I headed up Sheep Creek and onto the Dolores Triangle. After looping around through Granite Creek, I headed back ...
Saturday, June 13, 2009
Another 12 hour day in the books. This time with Amanda. I figured that since I have now driven the Kokopelli and the Tabeguache, I would just finish off the Grand Loop and find a 4×4 route of the Paradox Trail. We got an early start this morning and headed towards Gateway, CO where I topped off my tank before heading up John Brown Canyon and the Gateway-Castleton Road to the start of the Paradox Trail.
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Sunday, June 7, 2009
My trip on the Tabeguache Trail yesterday ended when I reached Highway 141 in Unaweep Canyon, even though the actual trail continues on to Monument Road. The reason for this is that there is no motorized access to the trail on the north side of the highway. However, the section on the other side can be driven, but only as an out and back ride from Little Park Road. I have driven part of this section of trail before, but not all of it. It is more commonly referred to as Bangs Canyon in the 4×4 ...
Saturday, June 6, 2009
After finally running the full Kokopelli Trail last month, I decided I wanted to finish off the ‘Grand Loop’ trails. Today I tackled the second trail; the Tabeguache Trail. The Tabeguache (pronounced ‘tab-a-watch’) Trail is mountain bike trail that starts out near Montrose, CO and ends up near Grand Junction. Like the Kokopelli Trail, it is made up mostly of 4-wheel drive roads with a few sections of single-track mixed in. However, unlike the Kokopelli, there is not a lot of information about the Tabeguache available…especially for someone wanting to take a Jeep along as much ...
Sunday, May 31, 2009
What a great day! Amanda and I woke up early this morning and headed over to McDonald Creek for a little hiking. This is a nice easy hike that starts out near Castle Rocks and then heads down to the Colorado River.
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Saturday, June 28, 2008
Today Amanda and I went up on the Uncompahgre Plateau to do a little exploring. Last year I had driven across the plateau on it’s main road (Divide Road), so this time we started checking out some of the 4WD roads on the northeast corner of the plateau.
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