This morning I headed to the Colorado National Monument to hike down Monument Canyon. Here’s a few photos I took along the way.
Making my way down into the canyon
Looking over the Coke Ovens from the side trip to the overlook
Continuing on down the trail
The Coke Ovens from below
At the bottom of the canyon
On Saturday, Amanda and I headed a little south to Ouray and then proceeded up Camp Bird Road and into Yankee Boy Basin. Our destination was to hike to Blue Lakes Pass so that I could scout out the route up Mount Sneffels along the way for a future hike/climb.
Gilpin Peak across Yankee Boy Basin from the upper parking area
Start of the hiking trail
Wrights Lake and Gilpin Peak
Continuing on…..I really like this photo
Gilpin Peak
Amanda snapped this photo of me
Since Amanda had to work today, it was up to me to figure out what I was going to do. While having breakfast this morning, I figured I would head up on the Uncompahgre Plateau to explore a few roads I haven’t been on yet. I started out on Divide Road and made a large loop all the way back home. Here’s a few pictures from my day.
Stopped in a large grove of aspens on Campbell Point
Coming down the other side of the plateau, there were great views of the La Sal Mountains
Drove through a historic uranium mining area…..I will have to spend more time here in the future
Near Mesa Creek
Found a few petroglyphs
With temperatures over 100 degrees in Grand Junction this weekend, we headed up into the mountains for some cooler temperatures. We made our way south to Silverton before heading over Stony Pass. After stopping to find a geocache along the small Rio Grande, we headed for Kite Lake.
Kite Lake was a nice place to stop for some lunch
An old cabin on the shore of Kite Lake
Headed back towards Stony Pass
One of the goals I set for myself this year was to hike a 14er. Yesterday morning two friends and I hopped into my Jeep and headed down to the San Juan Mountains to try Handies Peak. Handies Peak is 14,048 feet high and ranked 40th out of the 53 14ers in Colorado. I chose this mountain because it’s relatively close to home, but mainly because it is one of the easier trails to the top of a 14er. From American Basin the trail is only 5.5 miles round trip with about 2500 feet of elevation gain.
Since we were in my Jeep, we headed south to Animas Forks via Silverton and headed over Cinnamon Pass to reach American Basin. We ended up starting the hike a little later than we had planned, but we did end up reaching the summit by around noon. There were a number of dark clouds forming around us when we reached the top, but luckily we only had a few sprinkles of rain fall on us during our descent. I definitely struggled a little from the saddle to the peak, but am happy to report that I did make it all the way to the top 🙂
Here’s a few photos from our climb.
Handies Peak towers above my Jeep in American Basin before we get started.
Hiking to the top
Andrew
Me.
Andrew and the trail ahead
