Sorry for the lack of posts, but this is where I've been for the past month: boating in Dinosaur National Monument. I've got lots of pictures to work on, and only a couple weeks in town before I head to the Grand Canyon, so don't expect much.
It was a great season to spend time in Dinosaur, which is truly the great undiscovered gem of the National Park system, as well as a spectacular and highly underused corner of Utah and Colorado. Perhaps the fact that most of the Monument is accessible only by river has something to do with it; that and the misleading name. Most of Dinosaur's strata are too old to bear any Dinosaurs. The Yampa and Green River canyons and their geology are the reason to go. And after a humdinger winter and a late, cold spring in the West the place was greener and more full of wildflowers than I've ever seen it in over a decade of boating. As Steve mentioned, we did get snowed on, at ~5,000 feet in mid-June! The snow that got us at river level was heavy, sopping, camera-killing stuff, but here's a picture of the first dusting on the rims at 6:30 that morning:
More to come, I hope!
Oh, fine, here are a couple more. The previous two were of Lodore Canyon on the Green; the Yampa deserves at least as much attention. Stormy weather at Harding Hole:
The (somewhat) famous Tiger Wall:
3 comments:
Stunning - absolutely lovely!
I am not surprised by the snow. Here in Washington we can hardly hike in the high country without ice axes. And it is already July....
Yeah, the Colorado mountains are the same way this year: just melting out. But Dinosaur is desert and only about 5,000 feet!
The rains are already here in Santa Fe, and it's nice and cool most of the day. It continues to be a most laudable year.
Lovely photos!
Hope the Grand Canyon goes well and aren't these early monsoons nice?
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