Sometimes climbing these mountains can be a massive logistical undertaking. But other times the trips just write themselves. That was the case for me on a random weekend in the autumn of 2025. I was feeling pretty burned out with the relentless responsibilities of life. As such, mountains have been hard to come by this year. A trip to the hills was long overdue. I was originally planning on working on my centennial list via the apostles group. But an early dusting of snow made me reconsider. As I did, I settled on the Mt. Solitude group. Keep Reading…
In mid-August Steve and I packed into the Weminuche and spent three nights camped on the shore of Sunlight Lake to the northeast of Sunlight Peak. Of course the main focus was to climb the 13ers surrounding the basin, but we were equally enamored with the idea of simply visiting this particular place given the lore around it.
Ever since my first pack-ins to the Weminuche I’d always held Sunlight Basin as this sort of mythical, rarely visited place. For many years it had a reputation of being so difficult to get to, people would look for alternate ways to hit the peaks in the area so as to avoid Sunlight Creek. Before his passing, John Fielder called it his favorite place in Colorado, and I’ve heard that same sentiment echoed by others who have made the trek in there. Needless to say, it had long been on the bucket list. Indeed, to get there is no easy task. While there are a few different ways to do it, Steve and I ultimately chose to head in from the Vallecito Reservoir, north to the Sunlight Creek confluence and up to Sunlight Lake from there. Keep Reading….
In a recent ongoing effort to sample the growing number of Gravel Races throughout Colorado, I was successfully able to convince Ben and my brother to sign up for the Salida 76 this year, along with Gaper Kevin who has slogged up a number of races with me over the years. Salida 76 seemed like a great compromise. Of course, it fell on a weekend that saw the most precipitation of the summer, after what seemed like 40-50 straight days of sun and dry. But that’s all part of the experience right? It was a torrential downpour on me on the entire drive down there and I got stuck behind an excavator around Fairplay and could no longer see the road, much less a place to pass, all the way until arriving in Salida. Keep Reading…
Last month Anna-Lisa and I spent a week up in the Olympic Peninsula region of Washington State. While we didn’t hike every single day of the trip, there was no way we were leaving without checking out one of the most beautiful, classic loops in Olympic Nation Park – the Seven Lakes High Divide Loop.
Most often done as a backpack, the 20-mile loop boasts ~4,800 feet of elevation gain and traces out a big circle around the Seven Lakes Plateau. The route starts and ends at the Sul Doc Trailhead, about an hour’s drive east of Forks. We chose to do the loop in the counterclockwise direction, first climbing up to Deer Lake. This gets the elevation gain over with earlier in the day and leaves the long, gradual descent down the Sol Duc Valley for the end. The first miles up to Deer Lake are steep but the forest is spectacular. We climbed up through a layer of fog as the sun’s rays were just cresting a nearby ridgeline. Keep Reading….
