Blog

I recently had the chance to spend eight days climbing mountains and hiking trails all across the great state of Colorado. If you’ve been following the blog at all, you’ve likely seen some trail and city-specific posts about my adventures across the Rocky Mountain State. Rather than waste words and recap those in detail, I wanted to do something else. I wanted to give anyone interested the best possible resource with which to plan their own outdoors pilgrimage to the Mountain West! This trip … read more

I am a bit of black sheep in the outdoors community. I like hiking; I live for thin air and ascents through the timber line. I set pre-dawn alarms so I can watch a summit sunrise. But all of that goes out the window the second I say the following: I like front country hiking. My ideal day consists of waking up pre-dawn, hitting the trail as soon as possible, and hiking until afternoon convection currents (and the thunderstorms they generate) physically force me off the summit. Where I go once … read more

While out hiking in Colorado, a “rest day” hike between 14’ers took an unexpected turn and became one of my favorite memories of the trip: I spent an entire day bouldering along the rushing whitewater of the Continental Falls, just off the Spruce Creek Trail in the White River National Forest outside Breckenridge, CO. The Spruce Creek Trail is universally considered to be one of the more accessible hikes surrounding Breck, so I thought it the perfect respite between summit days. The 6.8 mile … read more

For the first leg of my Colorado trip, I got the chance to spend 24 hours in one of America’s legendary outdoors towns: Boulder, CO! Boulder became a household name in the 1970’s for its hippie town character and active outdoors endurance sports community. Specialty shops of all shapes and sizes dot downtown Boulder, and iconic local small businesses like Peppercorn and the Boulder Bookstore keep the town’s “mountain West” identity firmly rooted, even as the downtown area (now a swanky pedestria … read more