FAVORITE PHOTOS - OTHER FAVORITES

Here's a look at some of my favorite photos from the rest of the U.S. and Canada.  The highlighted red text links to the Destination for this hike, or you can click the photograph to enlarge it to 640 x 480 pixels:

We hiked for eight hours along the Teklankia River and covered only two miles on our first day in Zone 28.  This was the brutal ascent that awaited us on Day 2 when we decided to flee the canyon we dubbed Hells Canyon after The Camel nearly lost his life getting water for his morning coffee.  The climb out of here was no picnic and Smoky was offering huge sums of money for someone to haul his pack the last 1000 feet.

ALE and I decided to do an overnight backpacking trip near the Vail ski resort to explore the White River National Forest in Summit County. Vail has a gondola that is open in the summer months and it's much easier to access the higher elevations by catching a ride. We rode the gondola, then hiked a few miles into the Vail backcountry to set-up camp at 10,700 feet. The views from a large meadow near an exposed ridge were outstanding, especially at sunset.

Day 3 wasn't much easier than Day 2 in Denali (although much better than Day 1).  This final bushwack down to the river was much harder than it looked from the ridge where we spotted the Denali Park Road where we planned to catch the bus outta here.  The Joker and I took turns breaking trail in the thick vegetation and we expected to see a moose at any minute since their scat was everywhere, but all we saw were moseys and green thickets on the decent.   

 

I hiked this section with The Cowboy in the southwestern corner of Rocky Mountain National Park near Grand Lake. We spent three days hiking past meadows and trout streams along the North Inlet Trail to the Porcupine backcountry campsite. Overnight temperatures were well into the 20's during our hike in October and I snapped this sunset picture our first night on the trail from a small meadow not far from our designated campsite.

 

Mackie and I were on the trail at 9:15am this morning, and immediately had to ford a river at the edge of Glenn's Lake. The water was numbing with the summer snowmelt underway, but the scene was epic. I snapped this photo from the opposite bank while Mackie clung to a guide line that the park service set to counter the river current. We hiked over 12 miles to return to our vehicle, but had completely run out of water when we reached it. Fortunately, warm Molson's were in the cooler and we drank them in the afternoon sun to quench our thirst.

Mackie and I rolled into the White Sands National Monument in the late afternoon during our cross-country road trip and we hiked and climbed the sand dunes for a few hours before sunset.  Mackie appears to be "floating" in this photograph that I shot from a distance of about twenty feet, but he was actually jumping off the sand dune.  He positioned his body so it didn't look like he had a running start.    

 

Bradley Lake (7,022 feet) has mature forests of lodgepole pine, Engelmann spruce, and alpine fir.  One morning, The Ox and I discovered that this is prime moose habitat as we hiked back to the trailhead.  This large bull moose was walking directly toward us on the Bradley Lake Trail as we rounded the lake on the eastern shore.  We backed up and got out of his way, but he kept coming.  This gave me enough time to snap a photo as we retreated deeper into the woods.     

OTHER PHOTO LINKS

Appalachian Trail Favorites - This is a collection of my favorite photos from the AT, many of which were taken during my 1994 thru-hike.

Top Ten Favorites - This is a collection of my ten most favorite photographs from the trail.

Southeastern Favorites - These shots are from the southeast, where I do the majority of my hiking.