WINTER HAS RETURNED to the foothills of Colorado’s Front Range, as it so often does this time of year. Mid April? Spring? Hah! With flakes wafting down and cold nipping at one’s exposed digits you’d barely know it. Which made it the perfect time to share a night in the hills with Igloo Ed. Igloo Ed is […]
To Vegas with Igloo Ed Read More »
Or, The Unexpected Benefits of Sleeping Without a Tent. ONE OF MY goals this year (aside from successfully publishing The Earth Beneath My Feet) is to sleep out at least fifty-two times. That’s once every week on average. Fifty-two mountain nights. As quests go, it should be easy, right? Once upon a time it would
The Fifty-Two Night Quest Read More »
The location wasn’t anywhere well known or especially scenic. It was merely a rustic little cabin perched beside a modest little brook, a tumbling watercourse similar to many thousands right across Colorado. At first glance it looked like ‘just another mountain stream splashing across a few ordinary gray rocks‘. Nothing special. And technically, that was
A Cabin Beside A Creek Read More »
IT WAS A fairly typical spring week along Colorado’s Front Range: snow one day, warmth the next; clear one moment, cloudy the next. As winter ebbed into spring and then slipped back into winter each day brought something new. For a wanderer on foot, it was just about perfect. Despite a busy week I
Exclusive accommodation Read More »
I’M A LITTLE LATE with this blog… but that’s okay: the snowstorm it covers was a little late too. Storm ‘Xylia’ (and who else dislikes the naming of regular weather systems as though they are hurricanes?) trundled through seven days ago, dropping almost two feet of snow on Golden – but for a while it
The Storm That Wasn’t In A Hurry Read More »
TWO WEEKEND’S AGO I camped at 11,200 feet high in the Colorado wilderness. To say the February night was cold would be an understatement. Sure, it wasn’t Himalayan or polar cold, but the minus five Fahrenheit (minus twenty Celsius) I recorded INSIDE my tent wasn’t tropical either! For me, it teetered right on the edge
How to stay warm in the cold. Ten Winter Camping Tips. Read More »
I WAS ON assignment this week… well, on speculative assignment. A photographer friend kindly suggested my name to a prominent Colorado magazine. They were looking for photos to illustrate a ‘how to’ feature on winter camping and wondered if I had any. Sure I did – plenty. Far too many perhaps. Snow camping shots from
It’s not the photo that counts Read More »
ON THE WAY back from my recent quinzhee stay I meandered by Brainard Lake. In summer the location can be horrendously busy and the atmosphere far from wild, but on Sunday February 14, with the temperature at minus twelve Fahrenheit (minus twenty-four Celsius), and snow burying the land, and no one else about, it wasn’t
A Brainard Lake sigh Read More »
THE FORECAST was irresistible. It called for snow, arrival of an Arctic airmass, and with it the coldest temperatures of winter so far. Overnight lows were forecast to plummet to -13 Fahrenheit, -25 Celsius, which was impressively frigid, or even life-threatening, under certain circumstances. But as I saw it, perfect conditions for my fifth night
Igloo or Quinzhee? A snow shelter comparison. Read More »
I DIDN’T PLAN another blog post this week, but this morning’s atmospheric mists were too irresistible not to photograph, and seeing that I now have photographs, I figured I may as well share them! I’m tempted to write about the morning as well – but I’ll resist that, and let the photos and simple captions