The Prodigal Sons Return

I am going to breakdown our trip to Colorado in two parts, the backpacking and the sight-seeing. The trip overall, was fantastic! We left the airport in Knoxville, TN at around 5:00am arriving in Grand Junction, CO at 10:30am. We had reserved the cheapest rental car we could and was suprised at getting a brand new Nissan Frontier crew cab 4×4 truck. Pictures and videos to come on the rental truck excursions!

Our backpacking schedule was to leave for Blue Lakes on Friday morning early and we got started right on time. We arrived at the trailhead, a lot farther away than we thought, about 10:00am. I think my pack weighed in at about 25 lbs. for this trip. We had food and clothes for two nights and three days that added up to more than what i thought.

The hike in was one of the most difficult hikes I have been on to date. The elevation, 9,000 at the trail head and over 11,100 at the camping area, was definately a surprise. I had a hard time catching my breathe on multiple occasions. We literally went 1/4 mile before we were really sucking air! The very last video is a time lapse video from Darrin’s GoPro HD camera of the entire trip up. Very cool stuff!

Enough chit-chat, I will add some pictures and videos. Feel free to comment or ask questions.

GoProHD

Jason

Colorado and Mr. San Juan

Darrin and I are planning to make the trip to the San Juan Mountain Range in Colorado. Our trip will begin August 9th and I hope to have a very memorable time. We will be flying into Grand Junction, Colorado and driving south to a small town called Ouray. We have a tentative schedule in place, flying into the mountains on Thursday and cramming as many outdoor adventures into the few days we have as possible.

The pinnacle of this visit will be the backpack into the Mt. Sneffels section of the San Juan. We plan on backpacking into the area via the Blue Lakes Trail. The picture above is from a campsite at the Lower Blue Lake. Depending the affects of high altitude, we may try to summit Mt. Sneffels at over 14,300 ft. Either way, this trip should be one of a lifetime.

I will doing a full gear list for the upcoming trip sometime before we leave. I will try to get Darrin to do the same.

Jason