This Area Is Closed

Hello? Oh hey, we didn’t see you come in. It’s been a while! Apologies for that. This is not the first hike we’ve attempted in 2020. Though, through a series of not-so-fortunate events, it is the first hike this year worth being written about here. With snow on the decline and temperatures on the rise, […]

Black Ridge Blues

In Utah, there’s a place, a National Park, known far and wide for its naturally-occurring sandstone arches, worn over the years by wind and water. This entry isn’t about that place. This entry is about an area a bit closer to the Rocky Mountains, an area East of the Colorado-Utah border: Black Ridge Canyons Wilderness. […]

Hoodoo You Love?

Welcome back, one and all, to the ongoing travels and travails of the Overcast Adventurers! This episode takes myself and Skyler, along with two guests (Jessie and David) back to the dusty tracks of the Needles District in Canyonlands National Park, Utah (which we’ve visited previously; see here and here). In fact, we even returned […]

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. […]

I Bless The Rains Down Glen Affric Way

Picture, if you will, a country. A few hundred miles west of Norway, a few hundred miles more southeast of Iceland, and an imaginary line north from England; this country is Scotland. It was Scotland where I spent the last year studying, and it was Scotland where Skyler decided to join me for some highlands […]

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 […]

Going Coastal

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 […]

Aurora Torreyalis

My car whined and groaned in pain as we drove up the county road toward the trailhead of the standard route up Grays and Torreys Peak. “It’s OK, lil’ Subaru,” I reassured the struggling automobile, “you’ve done this before.” Grays and Torreys, by way of their novice and popular standard route, were my fourth and […]

Rite of Spring

Limestone is a soft rock made up of calcium carbonate. Water, which is regularly acidic after interacting with carbon dioxide, eats through limestone easily, and creates many of the world’s most awe-inspiring caverns. There is precious little of this rock in Colorado, but some exists in the north-western part of the state where a few […]

Orphans and Endorphins

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 […]