san juan mountains

This is a report of the trip my Son and I took from Elk Park to Needleton via Vestal, Balsam and Noname basins. It is an off trial route with lots of route finding and adventure. it is very remote and rarely visited. The only beta on this trip I was able to find called it the Bruce Traverse...

The stars finally aligned for me to go backpacking in the San Juan mountains in SW Colorado. I had enough vacation time to take a big solo trip ("big" for me means five days), the weather forecast was perfect, I was physically feeling fine (very little knee/foot pain), and the smoke from the...

Stuck home, thought I'd toss up something from the past. Hiking forums in the time of Covid. Couple years back these photos were stuck in an inaccessible computer hard drive. Finally ordered an enclosure to put it into to pull out these pics. Artemus had asked me to post this then when I...

***Part 2 of 2 of my 2017 trip to Chicago Basin in Colorado. My hiking partner, Dave, and I also overnighted near the rim of the Black Canyon of the Gunnison before also heading out to summit Utah's Mount Peale, the highpoint of the La Sal Range near Moab because we had a bit of extra time...

***Part 1 of 2 of my second multi-day backpacking trip to Colorado in summer 2017; check out Part 2 for the rest of the adventure.*** Originally this trip was supposed to be an epic "thru-style-hike" (starting and ending at very different places) in Idaho's Sawtooth Range. I had, over the...

Okay! Here's part two of Colorado Trip 2017 # 1. :) Where we left off in the last post we'd headed to Montrose for food at the restaurant called Pahgre's. Mitch drove Claron's car while I rode along, Dave drove himself. Jeff and Claron had come down from Yankee Boy Basin and the Ouray side...

This is actually part one of a two-part trip report on my first major backpacking trip of 2017; there was a bit too much epicness to fit into a single post without requiring an epic amount of reading time...but they're both very worth checking out. :) Views while ascending to Blue Lakes Pass...

***New to BackcountryPost - This is the first of several posts of favorite trips I've taken in the recent past that I think will be helpful or of interest to others here. Eventually I'll be current with my posts and only new stuff will show up here. Enjoy! :)*** Each year I try and plan at...

There were a couple trips in Colorado's San Juans on my short list for backpacking trips. One of them was a trip in the Uncompahgre Wilderness. Sept 17th I set off for a loop for a few days. Originally I intended to loop around both Wetterhorn and Uncompahgre Peaks but a thunderstorm dropped...

Objective: Wham Ridge, Vestal Peak - Grade III 5.6 This report is dedicated to the likes of @ram who showed that he could post a popular TR here involving adventure, suffering, climbing and even more suffering, and @Kullaberg63 who has demonstrated that you "don’t need no stinking trail”...

Saturday & Sunday, September 12-13, 2015 Sunset on San Luis Peak in the La Garita Mountains. Since Diane needed to stay home this weekend to get some school work done, I was on my own and decided to climb my sixth and final new fourteener of the year. After looking over my maps I settled on...

Saturday & Sunday, July 25-26, 2015 The Dragon's Back at sunset with Wetterhorn Peak and Uncompahgre Peak on the horizon. This weekend Diane and I went on an overnight backpacking trip into the Uncompahgre Wilderness of the San Juan Mountains to explore and photograph the area around Unnamed...

Friday & Saturday, July 17-18, 2015 This weekend Diane had to stay home so I set out on my own into the San Juan Mountains to finally climb my first 14ers of the year. I planned to hike to the top of Redcloud Peak and Sunshine Peak bright and early on Saturday morning. I left work early on...

I took a trip to Utah & Colorado with my family in September 2014. This was a trip my wife and i planned after our daughter was born in early 2013. The plan was to spend a week hiking, photographing places around moab and then a week photographing fall colors in Colorado. During our trip we...

Fall Colors 2014 Saturday & Sunday, September 20-21, 2014 On Saturday, Diane and I headed back down to the San Juan Mountains again so we could climb to the top of Courthouse Mountain in the Cimarron's . While this mountain is short compared to the surrounding peaks in the area at only 12,152...

Labor Day Weekend | Sunday & Monday, August 31 - September 1, 2014 After our overnight backpacking trip into Wetterhorn Basin we decided to stick around the San Juan Mountains for one more day and drive a few of the high mountain passes and trails around Silverton. After lunch in Ouray, we...

Labor Day Weekend | Saturday & Sunday, August 30 - 31, 2014 When I asked Diane what she wanted to do over Labor Day weekend she suggested that we go on another backpacking trip. I guess it's safe to say that she enjoys backpacking since she only went on her very first trip back in June. After...

Saturday & Sunday, August 2-3, 2014 This weekend Diane and I spent a nice relaxing overnight backpacking trip at the Blue Lakes in the Mount Sneffels Wilderness. I have wanted to hike up to the Blue Lakes for many years and am glad I was finally able to get up that way. The scenery was...

Friday - Sunday, July 18-20, 2014 Diane and I decided to spend a relaxing weekend in the San Juan Mountains around Silverton camping, hiking, peak-bagging, driving high mountain passes and looking for wildflowers. We left after work on Friday and headed over Red Mountain Pass to the South Fork...

Upper Cascade Falls & Baldy Peak Saturday & Sunday, June 21-22, 2014 This weekend for the summer solstice, Diane and I headed down to Ouray to get in a little hiking in the San Juan Mountains. Since there's still a lot of snow up high and it would be our first time really hiking in the...