In our last trip to the Indian Peaks Wilderness, Ty and I trekked alongside the roaring Cascade Creek to find the remote Mirror Lake and Crater Lake, two bodies of water nestled at the foot of the Continental Divide’s western flank. The trail had started near Lake Granby, a hotspot for recreation, and the third-largest […]
Read more "Hellfire and Brimstone"West Spanish Peak—the United States’s easternmost 4,000-meter peak—enjoys prominence in elevation and notoriety in history. Standing at an imposing 13,626 feet, the mountain’s apex may not rise as high as many of the other peaks in Colorado, but still takes the rank as the state’s twelfth-most topographically prominent summit. Rising nearly 7,000′ over its north […]
Read more "Conquistador-able"For me, I usually spend less time adventuring when snow begins to fall. This is not because I dislike snow, rather, I merely don’t have a lot of experience dealing with it. An REI gift card recently reminded me “adventure has no off season.” With this lovely adage in mind, I decided to try an […]
Read more "Going Coastal"Maybe the depiction on my atlas was deceiving, or maybe we were just victims of my own foolishness, but I definitely thought that Gardner, Colorado—a town with multiple churches and an herb shop—would have a gas station. With a flickering gaslight, we, the Overcast Adventurers and Ty’s friend Seth, opted to purchase five gallons of […]
Read more "Orphans and Endorphins"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"Deep in the heart of the Maroon Bells-Snowmass Wilderness lie many peaks of epic renown, peaks which jut far and away into the azure skies. We didn’t climb any of those peaks on this hike. Rather, we decided to hike to Copper Lake, a body of water in the wilderness area just below East Maroon […]
Read more "A Penny for Our Thoughts"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"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 