
A mother and baby marmot perched on a rock up in Ice Lakes Basin, San Juans, Colorado. Check out a zoom crop of the two below.
I was up at Ice Lakes Basin today, in the San Juans of Colorado, and saw a boat on the lake at 12,257′! They hauled this inflatable raft almost 2,500 feet up to take this cruise. That is some ambitious leisure.
Check out my new gallery site design at www.WideRange.org.
I’ve been working on this for months in my spare time, and since I haven’t had much spare time recently, it has taken me months! I’ve finally implemented my new upgraded gallery admin program, so now I get to enjoy all the admin functionality that my web clients have been using for the last few months. Although there are lots of changes, most of it is on the back-end site, so the public won’t notice much difference in the functionality. The biggest upgrade for me personally is the ability to organize the images in whatever order I want for each gallery separately; so now I’ve moved some of my more popular images to the front pages of each gallery.
In the coming month or two, I’ll also be working on a new search feature which will enable me to structure my photos in an additional, alternative manner to the normal gallery structure. And of course then people will be able to search my database of images to find whatever photographs they are looking for.
Anyhow, if you have a chance, check it out and let me know what you think!
This weekend I went on a wonderful 25 mile backpacking loop from Ouray. I started at Bear Creek, a few miles up the road from Ouray, hiked up to the rolling green tundra paradise of the Uncompahgre Wilderness, along the Horsethief Trail to the Bridge of Heaven Trail, then back down into Ouray. I camped two nights along the way.
The tundra is so beautiful right now, with lush green grass and wildflowers popping up everywhere. In contrast to last week’s brutal bushwhack, this trip was a stroll through paradise. I was practically ecstatic as I walked through one gorgeous basin after another. This hike easily ranks among the best I’ve done in Colorado, and it’s basically in my backyard!
UPDATE: I’ve finally posted my photos here.
Here’s a goofy video for you. It’s pretty awesome how this guy Matt got paid to travel the world to do exactly this… read more about his adventure at Where the Hell is Matt?
I was just notified in a round-about way of this post of my Croatia waterfall photo on a Christian blog. (The blog is ironically titled “Atheist Central”).
The author posts my photo of the beautiful waterfalls, then states “Look what our God created. And it’s nothing but a trash bin, compared to what He has in store for those that love Him…” I understand that he’s just trying to make a point here, but the wording rubs me the wrong way. And since it’s my photo that he used to illustrate his point, I feel that I deserve a chance to express my opinion too.
During the last three days, I bushwhacked through the Cow Creek valley, a rugged and remote mountain valley in the Uncompahgre Wilderness of the San Juan Mountains east of Ridgway. My original plan was to hike through the valley and continue up to the high alpine zone, where I would hike a high loop route around to Wetterhorn Basin and then take a trail back to my truck. However this plan was thwarted by geography - the Cow Creek valley is absolutely impassible six miles up, forcing me to turn around and bushwhack all the way back out the way I came.

This photo shows a sample of the kind of terrain and bushwhacking I was dealing with the entire time. There are many obstacles along the river which forced me to constantly hike up and down through thick bush and forest and along steep, loose, rocky slopes. Over the three days, I spent 23 hours of tough hiking to cover a mere 12 miles round trip, for an average of about 0.5 miles/hour! I can think of a few words to describe this bushwhack; it was brutal, tedious, frustrating, demoralizing, maddening, hellish, unrewarding, exhausting, etc, etc.
Below are some more photos from this fruitless exploration.

[+] Dusk in Ouray, Colorado as seen from the Sutton Mine Trail.