Located in the high desert canyon country of western Colorado, McInnis Canyons National Conservation Area consists of approximately 123,430 acres of BLM-administered land near Fruita, Colorado. Originally known as Colorado Canyons National Conservation Area, the NCA was established by Congress on October 24, 2000. Internationally important fossils have been uncovered during more than a century of excavation. Pictograph and petroglyph sites abound, and the Old Spanish Trail, once referred to as the “longest, crookedest, most arduous mule route in the history of America,” runs through the NCA.

Twenty-five miles of the Colorado River wind their way through the NCA, attracting boaters and rafters who value a relaxing float through spectacular multi-hued sandstone canyons. The NCA is a recreation destination, drawing visitors to the world-class mountain biking on Mack Ridge and along the 142-mile Kokopelli Trail, which extends to Moab, Utah. Among its unique natural resources are the more than 75,000 acres of the Black Ridge Canyons Wilderness, which includes the second-largest concentration of natural arches in North America.

McInnis surrounds Colorado National Monument leading to speculation this entire area may some day reach national park status. Hiking trails are abundant throughout with separate trailhead areas that include Devils Canyon, the Fruita Paleontological Area (FPA), Rustler’s Roost, and Horsethief Canyon among many others. Paula fell in love with the diversity of McInnis during her stay in Loma. Upon my arrival, I would have to agree. I had previously been to nearby CNM a handful of times over four decades, but had somehow missed McInnis. I’m so happy she took me, and shared her love of the canyons with me.

The week before Christmas 2020, Paula and I explored these trails several times, a nearby destination for after work evening exercise. The Fruita Paleontological Area, a small, half-mile square of bentonite just a few minutes from Fruita, particularly appealed to us. This tiny spot between the Colorado River and the soaring uplifts of McInnis Canyons preserves a diverse piece of prehistoric life from the Jurassic Period, dating back 150 million years. The terrain seems otherworldly, generally leaving us in awe. A feature of the FPA is Skinner Cabin, built in 1909.

Devils Canyon is a wildly diverse section of McInnis that has miles of trails through gorgeous canyons and to the river. We followed arroyos along pockmarked canyon walls and discovered red rock hoodoos that seemed like Earth’s natural architecture. A lot of “wonder where this goes” was happening. Wander on.

This gallery includes pictures from Devils Canyon and the FPA taken during several excursions into the area. Enjoy the photos, and please feel free to comment.

One of these days you are likely to look up and see that Colorado National Monument, along with McInnis Canyons National Conservation Area, has become a full-fledged national park. The stunning scenery certainly qualifies. With the acreage included in MCNCA, the size is there as well. The combination of NPS units offers a myriad of front country hiking trails and backcountry adventure.

A fellow named John Otto is who we can thank for the development of this picturesque and historic region of western Colorado near the small town of Fruita. Beginning in 1906 he built trails and started work on what would become the Rim Road. Otto once said, “I came here last year and found these canyons, and they feel like the heart of the world to me. I’m going to stay and build trails and promote this place, because it should be a national park.” Not long after, in 1911, President Taft signed the proclamation that established Colorado National Monument.

When I left North Carolina to join Paula out west, our home base was the little town of Loma, also near CNM. So we spent many days after her work, and on weekends exploring the region. I have been to Colorado National Monument a few times before when my brother lived in Colorado and have written trail reports, including this one of Monument Canyon. This post also includes some pictures from Monument Canyon, with a winter contrast.

On December 19, 2020 Paula and I drove the Rim Road from Devils Kitchen in the east to Balanced Rock at the west entrance. The Rim Road is 17 miles of stunning red rock scenery. Each curve will leave you breathless from the natural beauty that surrounds you. The photo at the top of this post is looking down into Monument Canyon from above. Then, on December 31 we took an afternoon hike up the lower section of Monument Canyon after a fresh snowfall. Simply delightful.

This gallery will give you a small idea of what Colorado National Monument is all about… from above, and from below. Enjoy the photos, and feel free to comment.

Ch-ch-ch-ch changes. David Bowie wrote of change in 1971, the year I was a freshman in college. For Bowie, it was a reflective song about stepping out on your own. I thought of that song and played it in my head as I sat down to compose this post. Not quite two months ago I made a major spontaneous change in my own life. I packed up a couple weeks of belongings and hit the road to travel across the country and make good on a number pf promises I had made to myself about retirement.

In coming posts about my experiences you will learn about Paula. She is wonderful. She is engaging. She is intelligent, caring and beautiful. She is also the love of my life. I have joined her nomadic lifestyle and am thoroughly enjoying every moment. Since mid-December 2020 we have had a number of exciting adventures in three states. We have formed a strong bond over our love of Nature, the outdoors, wildlife, and national parks.

This first story from my new life is a portrayal of the first day. I awoke in the back of my Subaru in Albuquerque, NM and drove through the four corners region to meet Paula at her AirBnB in western Colorado. Along the way I saw Shiprock in New Mexico, traveled the stunningly beautiful Scenic Highway 64 and 191 through NM, AZ and UT, making a brief stop in Arches National Park, before reaching her and the best hug ever.

Enjoy the photos, feel free to comment below, and follow along. I have a whole lot more to tell you.

A full closure of Rocky Mountain National Park in Colorado is now in place due to wildfire activity on the west side of the Continental Divide, a spokesperson for the park announced Thursday morning, October 22, 2020.

Air quality in the park is hazardous and Trail Ridge Road is impassable on the west side due to downed trees on the road.

High fire danger prompted the closure of the National Forest Service lands in Clear Creek County earlier and Denver Parks and Recreation closed all Denver Mountain Parks properties located in Clear Creek.

This comes after the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) closed administered land in Boulder and Larimer counties earlier this week.

All lands in those counties that are managed by the Royal Gorge Field Office will be temporarily closed for entry. The field office manages about 600,000 acres of public lands on the Front Range, all of which are east of the continental divide.

Closures for the Arapaho-Roosevelt National Forests and Pawnee National Grassland went into effect earlier this week for five counties due to the same drought conditions.

Cite…

Rescue workers with the Juan County Sheriff’s Department and The U.S. Forest Service evacuated 23 people and three dogs from the San Juan National Forest in Colorado as a wildfire tore through the area. The U.S. Forest Service deployed helicopters for the evacuation.

According to the Office of Emergency Management in San Juan County, the blaze — dubbed the Ice Fire — started on Monday, October 19, 2020 just after 1 p.m. local time in the South Mineral Creek area above the park’s Ice Lakes trailhead, and burned 320 acres by 5 p.m.

Per their last update, the U.S. Forest Service had air and ground “wildland fire crews” working on containing the Ice Fire with “tanker planes and a hotshot squad.”

Just last week, thousands of Colorado residents were forced to evacuate their homes as the Cameron Peak Fire and the CalWood Fire ravaged the state along the Front Range.

The Cameron Peak Fire became the largest fire in Colorado state history — and has burned 204,404 acres.

Cite…

From Colorado to Oregon to Maine, these incredible winter hiking trails offer beautiful views, wildlife-spotting opportunities, and fewer crowds.

If you have a habit of stashing your hiking boots the moment cooler temperatures arrive, you’ve been missing out. In the winter, the nation’s best hiking trails clear out and you can walk for miles without seeing another soul. Strap on a pair of snowshoes and stomp across glittering, snow-covered fields, or avoid the snow entirely and head south, where you’ll find plenty of dry terrain that’s too hot to brave in the summer.

The secret to winter hiking is making sure you have the gear necessary to stay warm, kick through snow, and outsmart the sun. Appropriate footwear and versatile lightweight layers are key. And since the days are shorter, you’ll want to make sure you give yourself plenty of time to finish your hike before darkness falls and the views you came for disappear.

To get you started, here are some favorite winter hiking trails…

You may find yourself traveling back in time. Hop down a series of stone steps, take a sharp left turn, and feel your heart skip a beat. There, sprawled out below a sandstone plateau dotted with piñon pines and juniper trees, stands the 800-year-old remains of Cliff Palace, an ancient city of the Ancestral Puebloan people.

The largest and best known of Mesa Verde National Park’s native dwellings, Cliff Palace is a wonder to behold. The site contains 150 rooms and 23 kivas (circular ceremonial spaces), indicating that it was once a location of great social and spiritual importance.

Though Colorado’s Mesa Verde may be primarily dedicated to preserving past cultural relics, the park’s use of technology to educate visitors is some of the best in the national park system. There’s a robust mobile app with a full-blown audio tour of more than a dozen sites, a podcast exploring the lives of the Ancestral Pueblo people, and a series of virtual tours of the most famous sites.

As you stare at the vast ruins before you, press play on your phone and find yourself even more deeply transported. The park enlisted TJ Atsye, a ranger and member of the Laguna Pueblo Tribe, to narrate the self-guided driving and walking tour of the Mesa Top Loop Road. She chronicled the history of her ancestors from 600 CE to about 1300 CE, from pit houses to the impressive masonry of the cliff’s-edge villages.

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An example of National Forest stewardship in action.

As with many mountain communities in Colorado, visitation to the Gunnison Valley is at an all-time high. Land managers observe that they have never seen our public lands as busy as they have been in recent years. The area is surrounded by 1.7 million acres of National Forest, and the Bureau of Land Management and National Park Service also manage well-known recreation areas and parks in the region.

The valley has been nicknamed “the American Serengeti” for its abundance of wildlife, the single-track trail network is among the largest in the country, and the network of waterways provide endless opportunities for summer recreation. If it sounds like the perfect place to escape during quarantine, you aren’t alone in thinking that way.

The National Forest Foundation and Gunnison County officials acted urgently this past spring to prepare for the anticipated onrush of summer visitation. The partners quickly hatched the idea for the STOR Corps – a jobs-creation program modeled in-part after the Civilian Conservation Corps of the 1920’s and in-part after the youth corps model that is so successful today.

The Corps is working with all of the federal land management agencies in the county, and the work is varied and of high importance. So far, the Corps has accomplished the following: distributed vaccines to prairie dogs, cleared deadfall on Wilderness trails, installed signs on Cottonwood Pass, restored wet meadows, removed noxious weeds, and planted NFF-funded trees on Slumgullion Pass.

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Over the weekend, the Grizzly Creek Fire became the largest in the history of Colorado’s White River National Forest as far as acres burned.

As of Sunday morning, the fire had burned 20,665 acres of national forest out of a total burn area of 25,690 acres in just six days, according to U.S. Forest Service data. The additional acres are on Bureau of Land Management grounds or private property.

White River National Forest Supervisor Scott Fitzwilliams said the Grizzly Creek Fire erupted so significantly because of hot, dry and windy conditions and because firefighting in the early stages was so difficult versus the steep, inaccessible terrain.

“Once it left the median of the highway, it was off to the races,” Fitzwilliams said Sunday. “There was no way to fight it.”

The fire started in the median of Interstate 70 on Monday afternoon, August 10, 2020, climbed the steep slopes to the north and later in the week jumped the Colorado River and made a run in the terrain to the south.

It’s ripped through terrain that was inaccessible to firefighters. Air tankers and helicopters dropped numerous loads of retardant and water but that only slowed the growth. The fire is now approaching fire lines on both sides of the river, but there is still potential for extensive growth in acreage, according to Fitzwilliams.

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Ed. note: If you’ve ever driven I-70 through iconic Glenwood Canyon west of Vail, CO, you know of the terrible loss of beautiful natural landscape the Grizzly Creek Fire represents. It is said to have burned the forest surrounding the incredibly gorgeous Hanging Lake, high above the canyon floor.

Awe-inspiring sights come easy to Rocky Mountain National Park. Elk gather in herds on the east side, while moose patrol the other. In between are bighorn sheep, mountain lions, and black bears. And that’s just the wildlife. The 265,807-acre park, located in northern Colorado, offers some of the best access to high-alpine terrain in the country, thanks to Trail Ridge Road—the highest paved highway in America—which tops out at a 12,183-foot peak, one of more than a hundred in the park taller than 11,000 feet.

The lower elevations, below 9,000 feet and referred to as the montane, are dominated by broad, grassy meadows filled with more than 350 miles of trails. The subalpine environment, from 9,000 and 11,000 feet, is comprised of natural lakes, boulders, and evergreen forests, and the majority of trails meander through these breathtaking landscapes. And at 11,000 feet, the alpine ecosystem begins: trees give way to windswept tundra, craggy peaks, and cirque glaciers, and the crowds dissipate, leaving you with the “roof” of the park mostly to yourself.

Rocky Mountain National Park is the third most visited park in the country, and it’s only getting more popular—visitation hit record numbers in 2019, pulling in nearly 4.7 million people. Parking lots in scenic areas like Bear Lake fill up before breakfast, and Trail Ridge Road is packed with minivans and RVs by 10 A.M.

If you have your heart set on seeing some of the park’s signature features, accept that crowds are part of the experience. If you want to minimize interaction with those crowds, get started as early as you can—essentially before dawn—and head to Grand Lake, on the western side; roughly 80 percent of all visitors enter through Estes Park, on the eastern side. If parking lots are full, don’t fret; the park has a good shuttle system that will take you to popular trailheads. Use it.

See complete guide…