Valley of the Gods, Monument Valley, and Navajo National Monument

Having survived the rainy night we awoke to grey but dry skies and packed up the truck in between photos of the stunning terrain that surrounded us. Valley of the Gods is BLM land and a great place to experience the beauty of Southern Utah without all the restrictions and regulations of National Park Land. [...]

Canyonlands and Natural Bridges

Our weather luck was wearing out. We had hiked through a brief but annoying thunderstorm on our visit to Landscape Arch and the skies were not looking any better as we drove towards the Needles District of Canyonlands National Park. Canyonlands has several ‘Districts’ and the Needles one was the most convenient for us, therefore [...]

A Stormy Sierra Weekend: One Summit, Buckets of Rain, One Fish, and a Mosquito Invasion

With our longer Sierra trip coming up soon, we wanted to head out last weekend and get in some hiking and sleeping at altitude. I always feel better when I get some time above 10k before hauling a heavy pack up there. Our intended trip was to head out to Laurel Lakes (just south of [...]

Pine Creek to Granite Park: Bear Lakes Loop Day 1

Things started off weird. After a warm night of car camping at nearby Horton Creek, Sooz and I headed up to Pine Creek to start our planned nine day adventure. Although early, there were some light poofballs of clouds. So that forecast of ‘hot, clear, and stable for the next week’ already seemed shot. Nuts. [...]

Chilnualna Falls Backpack

The passes are open but the high country isn’t yet melted out. Where to go on a weekend overnight that will give me my Sierra fix, but avoid the unknown conditions and snow/mud hybrid trails that are common at this time of year? The answer occurred to me last Wednesday – an easy, low elevation [...]

Fossil Canyon and the Domelands

We spent the first couple days of our trip exploring the southernmost side of Anza Borrego (along S2), basecamped at Agua Caliente Hot Spring. It was nice to camp there since we had the nice hot pools to come back to at the end of the day! On Monday we checked out two areas I [...]

Mastadon Peak and other goodies

We left Palm Springs on Christmas morning, ready to head back out to the desert for some hiking. Unfortunately, the weather was not cooporating and most of the surrounding ranges were completely socked in. That, combined with the ridiculous wind forecast, had me rather disappointed as we worked our way down highway 10 towards the [...]

© 2011 Calipidder Contact Suffusion theme by Sayontan Sinha