I remember the first time I looked through a pair of binoculars … a good pair of optics. Literally, in a few moments of glassing the hills I knew I would need a pair of these for no other reason than they were damn cool. The clearness of images at dusk, both near and far, […]

It all started with an early morning; 5:40 am to be exact. The minute I got up I was excited, but also unsure of how well I would do on this journey into the wilderness. By the time we hit the road my mind was racing with a million different thoughts. What kind of work […]

Something was foreboding in the air. It could have been the clouds that were building much quicker than they had the previous days. Plan Ahead and Prepare. For me, the most important principle of backpacking! It is what you do at home before you go and what you consider is necessary to do the trip […]

Let’s start with dinner as tonight was Boone’s dinner choice – two packages of ramen noodles and a package of cheese crackers with peanut butter. Go ahead groan in disbelief (I would never feed my clients ramen noodles with crackers) but craving for salt made the inclusion of those foil packages oh so delicious. But […]

Six years ago I trudged up hills and glissaded down inclines and somehow managed to keep myself found in the twists, turns and undulating peaceful serenity of the trail. For the past four days I’ve walked some of those same footsteps, albeit with no snow, and found today parcels of what I’d been anxiously seeking […]

Funny name … has nothing to do with balding heads! On your mark … get set … go! With map and compass in hand our first bearing had been set. With the appropriate starting cue everyone scattered in differing directions, some walking, some running but each with a smile and the hint of confidence in […]

A string of carins marked a direction through miles of up and down undulations above a gulch that stretched far and wide. And then over, under and around to another spectacular gulch with is associated saddles and shoulders and crossings. A herd of elk could be seen resting on a small knob to the west […]

Rain fell throughout the night. Not a torrential downspout of no end but the continuous fall of droplets that ensured a thick dampness in the air though we were safely tucked in the blue nylon protector with a zipper on each side. When we awoke the sun was considering crossing the horizon and despite the […]

Stretching our legs we shouldered our packs each with six full days of food and half a cheeseburger, a left over lunch bonus from the drive. Overhead, sounds of bowling balls being dropped on a wooden floor echoed as the clouds grew heavier and more ill-omened. At the end of the parking lot stuck a […]

An unexpected opening in our home calendar gave us pause … of about 22-minutes. Quickly pulling out maps and guidebooks we fingered dots on the several maps from various starting points until we agreed on one line. In lieu of traveling too far from our Pagosa Country home we opted for the northern part of […]