It was at the end of last year that the Overcast Adventurers and company donned their heaviest winter coats and set off to Rocky Mountain National Park to snowshoe up to a couple of frozen alpine and subalpine lakes. Back then, the crowds were thin, the air was brisk, and the landscape was an icebox […]
Read more "Through the Looking Glass"A lazy weekend. My last day of classes. Encroaching finals week. These are the perfect ingredients for end-of-the-semester cabin fever. While there is no known cure for this cabin fever–medically speaking–adventuring seems to usually treat such an ailment. The Hermit’s Rest trail had been on my list for several years. Near the eastern terminus of […]
Read more "Bone Morrow Biopsy"While much of the United States prepared to protest recent political affairs, I stared at the snow incessantly falling outside my apartment window. My thoughts drifted away from academia and to adventure-emia. West Elk Wilderness, one of Colorado’s largest and most immaculate wilderness areas, lies just fifteen minutes away from the campus of my university. […]
Read more "Powder to the People"Missouri Mountain, Iowa Peak, and Emerald Peak Grand Slam ~15.5 miles round-trip; 6,300′ elevation gain. The turn to Chaffe County Road 390 and its subsequent vexatious washboard ruts felt all too familiar. Five months ago, I had kicked off the 14er season with ascents of Mt. Belford and Mt. Oxford—two of the three 14ers […]
Read more "Sawatch Me Do Three"Unprompted excursions often give way to the most sincere adventure. Beset with staggering senioritis, I decided to trade a Saturday of homework on campus for a Saturday amidst the peaking fall colors in the Gunnison area. Despite only being two days into autumn, snow had already fallen in areas above 8,000 feet. Kebler Pass, a […]
Read more "Autumn’s Lost and Found"El Diente Peak. A high mountain summit within the San Juan Range named for its tooth-like visage (El Diente translates to “The Tooth” in Spanish). If this peak is the tooth of the San Juans, then these mountains have clearly forgotten their oral hygiene. El Diente Peak, and its neighboring summits of Mt. Wilson and […]
Read more "Tooth Decay"I vividly remember the first time I knowingly laid eyes on Mt. Ouray (pronounced ooo-ray). Last summer, the Overcast Adventurers had the opportunity to explore the vast reaches of Colorado on a biology class trip called Ecoregions (a blog for which can be found here). It was on the first day of that two-week journey […]
Read more "Labor Day Ouray Soirée"To the north of Lake Irwin, a popular recreation area near Crested Butte, a wall of cliffs acts as a gate to the pristine Raggeds Wilderness. These cliffs span roughly three miles and rise hundreds of feet above the basins that sculpt the Raggeds. It was over the course of millions of years that erosion […]
Read more "Blue Note"With the end of August comes cooler weather, gentler sun, windier skies, and, for one of the Overcast Adventurers, school! Skyler was back up in Gunnison for classes, and I briefly left my life of state park maintenance to join him for a hike. We departed Gunnison on August 27th for the Fossil Ridge Wilderness […]
Read more "Silence of the Lamphiers"East Slopes. 14.5 miles RT. 4,500′ gain. 6 hours. 20 minutes. High above the iconic Colorado mountain town of Leadville stands Mt. Massive—an aptly named wall of a mountain and several of its constituent sub-summits. It is the third highest peak in the contiguous United States, which is certainly not hard to believe when […]
Read more "Massive Aggressive"
The Overcast Adventurers 