When Helene Freezes Over

The day, characteristically for a hiking day, started before sunrise. Out of convenience and partiality we journeyed again to Rocky Mountain National Park. Our goal this time was to reach a mountain lake called Helene Lake. Not often visited in the winter, Helene Lake’s lack of traffic is the result of the lake shore being […]

Brady Bop

This will be a quick blog for a quick hike. Brady Lake and Sopris Lake are neighboring entities isolated far out in the Holy Cross Wilderness of Colorado, closest by road to the small town of Minturn. The hike had been meant as a something to do midway through a camping trip near the larger […]

Ypsilon Way To The Top

With the global situation being such as it is this summer, Rocky Mountain National Park has made the (rather wise) decision to do a slow reopening. Visitors arriving during the day are subject to timed entry restrictions. However, for those willing to be up before the sun, it’s possible to enter the park sans pass […]

Strawberry Letter

With so much happening in both our personal lives and the broader world, Skyler and I opted for a shorter hike on June 7th. Strawberry Lake, directly East of Granby and south of Lake Granby’s Arapaho Bay, would be about 3.7 miles round-trip according to online sources. The trailhead was easy to miss, as it […]

Trip Report: Ad Astra

August 24, 2019. Our goal for the day was to summit Challenger Point and Kit Carson Peak. It’s morning, and the day’s first rays are starting to brighten the sky over the cold valley we had camped in north of Crestone. In a matter of mere minutes we went from wrapped in sleeping bags to […]

Warm Sandy Beaches

This summer has been an unusually stormy one for the state of Colorado, in turn making it more difficult to schedule hikes. With nothing but clouds in the weekend forecast, we decided to make an early morning foray to Rocky Mountain National Park. RMNP, generally best avoided during the summer months due to the insane […]

The Amenable Venable Lake

This week we have just a quick post from the b-e-a-utiful Sangre de Cristo Range. The Overcast Adventurers, plus Skyler’s friends Jesse (a returning guest star) and Barkley (a dog), braved glaring sunlight to hike up to Venable Lake. The trailhead for this hike started just past the old towns of Silver Cliff and Westcliffe. […]

Pacific Bleat

The three of them approached cautiously: their chestnut-brown eyes assessing me, gauging if I were a threat. With quizzical expressions on their wooly faces, the mountain goats passed within reaching distance of me, now disregarding my presence. I moved slowly as not to frighten them. They grazed on the alpine grasses beneath their hooves, and […]

Bluebird is the Word

Back in March, when snow still blanketed the ground in the mountains, I set out into the Wild Basin of Rocky Mountain National Park in an effort to find the sub-alpine Bluebird Lake. I trudged over five miles through the snowy landscape on a bleak, overcast day. After surpassing 10,000 feet in elevation, I began […]

Conquistador-able

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 […]