IntrepidXJ's Adventure Blog

Since I had Monday off from work and Amanda had to work I decided to head down to the San Juans for a little day trip. My destination was part of the Alpine Loop and my goals were to find a few geocaches along the way and get a little hiking in.

After passing through Ouray, I turned off of the Million Dollar Highway at the Mineral Creek trail and started climbing.

As usual, I stopped at the Mickey Breen mine.

The view up into Poughkeepsie Gulch

I also stopped at Mineral Point to take a few photos

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This weekend Amanda and I headed up into the Flat Tops to explore an area we hadn’t been to yet. We started in Dotsero and headed up Coffee Pot Road, following a number of side roads to see where they went. We made a large loop that brought us next to the Flat Tops Wilderness area and to Adam’s Lake, before making our way back to Heart Lake. We setup camp on the shore of Bison Lake for the night. The next morning we checked out the Grizzly Jeep Trail and then made our way down to Glenwood Springs via the Transfer Trail. Here’s a few photos from the weekend.

Headed to the Deep Creek Overlook

View over Deep Creek

Following the little used Coffee Pot Corral Road

Big storm cloud rolling it. It rained for a little bit until this cloud blew over

Ten Mile Park

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We finally managed to get on the river for the first time this year! We were supposed to do this stretch of the Colorado a few weeks ago, but that trip was cancelled because of weather. Luckily we were able to find time this weekend to try it again. Here’s a few photos I took throughout the afternoon on my old Canon point & shoot…

Loaded up and ready to go

Weather was great, water was moving pretty fast.

Friends in the ducky

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On Sunday we headed up near the Little Book Cliffs Wild Horse Area to visit a small area known as The Goblins.

Headed towards South Shale Ridge

Colorful South Shale Ridge

First view of The Goblins. From the road they look a little interesting, but if you walk around them you can find a few cool formations.

Interesting formations at The Goblins.

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Well, it’s just about that time of the year again. It’s the part of the year that I start transitioning away from the deserts of Southern Utah and start to concentrate on the mountains of Colorado. The last time I was up in the San Juans was when I went snowshoeing back in January. I had heard that some of the passes around the San Juan Triangle have been starting to open, so on Saturday we decided to head on down there and see just what the conditions were. We found that the snow has been melting fast this year, and there were a lot more trails open than I had anticipated.

On our way to Silverton, we took the scenic side trip through the Red Mountain Mining District.

Red Mountain Creek

Yankee Girl

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