Lonesome Cyclone

The Needles District of Canyonlands National Park in Utah has been one of our favorite places to go hiking, ever since this blog was started. We’ve been there numerous times (see here, here, and here for example). However, we realized recently that we were running low on parts of the park that we hadn’t been […]

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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 […]

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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 […]

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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 […]

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Through the Looking Glass

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 […]

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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 […]

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Tooth Decay

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 […]

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Labor Day Ouray Soirée

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 […]

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Blue Note

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 […]

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Silence of the Lamphiers

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 […]

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