We just got a blank new canvas to paint our carves on after 8 inches of May powder. Fresh snow under a hot May sun meant unstoppable globbing which felt like hauling bricks on our feet on the way up, but it was all worth it for the dreamy descents!

The predominately unsettled, cloudy, and cool weather this last month has nicely preserved the snow up high in the mountains, and north facing slopes have had an exceptionally smooth and consistent surface lately. So despite the record-low snowpack this year, the spring skiing/snowboarding has been pretty darn good!

After the lowest winter of snowfall on record in Colorado (about 25% of average), the south facing slopes of the Sneffels Range have the least amount of snow I've ever seen in the springtime. But, the north facing slopes are still holding nice, smooth snow for the time being!

After the doom and gloom of the heatwaves and rapidly melting snowpack in March, April has thankfully been much wetter and cooler here in southwest Colorado with some refreshes of snow up high. From what I've seen there's actually more snow now at the end of April than there was at the beginning! Earlier this week a storm dumped a fresh foot of powder in the mountains and some friends and I took full advantage with two back to back days of triple-descent tours.

Yesterday I dusted off the cobwebs from my splitboard and went on my first ski tour of the year! Given the record-low snowfall in Colorado this season, I just haven't been motivated to go out into the backcountry before now; but with the early onset of spring and the quickly dwindling snowpack I figured I might as well go check it out before it's all gone. Jason and I were delighted to find excellent snow conditions up high above about 11,000 feet elevation; the challenge was getting up to it through several miles of mostly dirt trail down low.

After a very slow start to winter, December came in with a bang with an absolutely glorious bluebird morning as snowstorm clouds cleared off revealing the Sneffels Range smothered in fresh powder. Winter is here!

Last night was another remarkable night of auroras all the way down in southwest Colorado, similar to the solar storm last year in October 2024. While I wasn't in such an epic spot as last year's show, it was still incredible to witness the pillars of red northern lights this far down south.

You know how when the mountains are illuminated by dawn/sunrise light it's called "alpenglow"? Well I'll call this "auroraglow" as the mountains glowed magenta from the light of the red auroras overhead (at least from what the camera could see with a bright lens and long exposure).

It's been a stormy October here in the San Juans with heaping amounts of lightning, thunder, drenching rains, and a bit of snow up in the high peaks. The southern San Juans in particular got hammered by Tropical Storm Priscilla, causing major flooding in Pagosa Springs!

In early October, autumn around southwest Colorado neared peak color. My backpack was packed for an overnighter in one of my favorite aspen getaways, which would be immediately followed by a week long road trip of further aspen wanderings.

Then random disaster struck in the most mundane of circumstances. Short story short, I took a spectacular digger over my patio coffee table and broke my big toe!!! So my autumn hiking season came screeching to a halt right when it was about to really get rolling, and in the absolute dumbest possible way. 😭

So this last week or so I've been stuck limping around the house, laying on my couch, looking off into the distance at the golden mountainsides of color, watching everyone online posting their fantastic photos and raving about what a wonderful autumn it's been. I feel so stupid for slamming my toe and so regretful for squandering this short precious season in this short precious life. Such is the curse of the injured outdoor lover.

If anything, this is a reminder to always be grateful for your health when you have it! Because you sure miss it when it's gone.

Anyhow, here are a few of my "warmup" photos from some hikes before I sidelined myself.

Last night's sunset was a wild one over Ridgway and the Sneffels Range! Stunning mammatus cloud formations rolled through the sky in advance of a booming thunderstorm. Even my wideangle 16mm lens couldn't quite fit these crazy clouds into the frame!

I'm a bit late on this post, but here are a few pics from a mini-vacation to Telluride in mid-August. My friend Bryan was visiting from the Front Range and invited us to join his family and friends to stay for a weekend at a condo in Mountain Village. Though it's only a short drive for us from Ridgway, it was a treat to spend a few days relaxing as tourists in Telluride, and to catch up with old friends!

With a big May snowstorm barrelling towards Colorado and unused ski tickets to A-Basin and Loveland, earlier this week I drove up to the Front Range for one last hurrah on the snowboard this season. I enjoyed a fun powder day at Arapahoe Basin, then met up with a few of my old Boulder buddies to carve up the groomers at Loveland Ski Area and A-Basin again. What a great way to wrap up the season in May!

During the last week of March, Claudia and I returned to my hometown of San Diego for the first time since 14 years ago! We visited some of my family and old friends, wandered around a few of my favorite places, drove through the neighborhood where I grew up, and of course ate a lot of delicious fish tacos.

Although it's been nearly 30 years since I lived in San Diego, there's something about it that is still rooted in my soul. The sound of the waves, smell of the ocean, coastal breeze, soft light, hazy clouds, Spanish missionary architecture, and countless other little details still feel like home to me.

One thing I kind of forgot about is just how beautiful the city is - specifically, the lush landscaping with all the exotic trees, plants, and cacti that were planted since the early 1900s. Some entire neighborhoods look like botanical gardens! We also visited the wonderful San Diego Botanic Garden in Encinitas, where trees and plants from all over the world are displayed. In San Diego's mild Mediterranean climate, as long as there's water just about anything can be grown there!

It felt great to be back, even if I'm just another tourist now.

Despite an understated "moderate" danger rating by the Colorado Avalanche Information Center (CAIC), the snowpack in the San Juan Mountains (and presumably throughout Colorado) is incredibly dangerous right now. Tender avalanche conditions are normal around here, but this season's snowpack is about as bad as it gets. There's a ~2 foot thick slab of recent snow from last week's big storm resting atop completely uncohesive faceted old snow. Basically the base of the snowpack is ball-bearings just waiting for a trigger to slide.

On Tuesday my friend Jason and I went for a backcountry tour and randomly met and became fast friends with Michael, a skier visiting from Liechtenstein! Michael joined us for two laps in a relatively safe zone, though we knew to avoid the wind-loaded convex rollovers that have buried people in the past. Another group up there that day wasn't quite aware of that and triggered a sizeable slide on exactly such a terrain feature. Fortunately nobody was caught though I'm sure that got their pulses racing!

Then on Wednesday the three of us headed out again, this time to explore a new route up a favorite peak. As we put in a skin track up a [safe] forested ridge, the snowpack was whoomphing, collapsing, and cracking around us. Very spooky. It's impossible to ignore such alarm bells from the snowpack, so it was a clear decision to abandon our initial plans and opt for a safer line of descent off the mountain.

That same day, a backcountry skier near Telluride triggered a large avalanche that swept him down through 1,000 feet of rocky, cliffy terrain. Miraculously he was uninjured and only partially buried.

Then on Thursday, tragedy inevitably struck when a skier was buried and killed by an avalanche near Ophir Pass.

All the while, the CAIC's avy report danger rating remains "moderate". I know that the CAIC doesn't want to cry wolf too often with overly alarmist avy ratings, but this season I can't help but question the value of distilling a very complex and variable snowpack into a one word danger level, especially when that rating significantly understates the lurking dangers. The CAIC's longer snowpack discussions in the daily avy reports always seem to be spot on and highly informative; but these days I pretty much just assume that the danger rating is higher than stated. In my mind, the dangers of the weak, faceted base of this snowpack will remain at least "considerable" probably until spring. Perhaps the avy danger ratings in times like this would be better summarized in a short sentence, or at least a few works, like "Deadly Moderate".

CAIC does fantastic work and I think they produce some of the best avy reports in the world. I would just encourage any backcountry skiers to always read their in-depth snowpack discussions instead of relying on a glance at the rating scales.

I hope that if even one backcountry skier/snowboarder is reading this, that I can be just a little nagging voice reminding you to always head the warnings of the snowpack, be flexible with your route and terrain choices, and err on the side of caution this season. That is all.

After a pretty snowy November, we've been in a mostly dry spell this December here in southwest Colorado. But, with cold temps and the low-angle December sun, there's still preserved powder out there up high and/or in shady areas. It's just a matter of finding it!

Yesterday morning Claudia and I woke bright and early for a day of skiing/snowboarding at Powderhorn Mountain above Grand Junction. The drive from Ridgway took us up over the top of Grand Mesa, where the aspens were beautifully frosted by a recent snowstorm and frigid temps. Despite my rabid eagerness to get on the slopes asap, I just had to pull over at one point and snap some pics of the frosted aspens backlit in the early morning sun. Glorious!

It's been nearly a week of sun since the last big snowstorm, so I didn't have high hopes for the snow quality today on my second splitboard outing of the season so far. But Vijay and I ended up finding smooth, firm powder to open up some high speed carves! Way better line than I expected today! Gotta love that. 🤙

Happy Thanksgiving! Lately I've been super antsy to get outside for a little adventure, so yesterday morning I spontaneously decided to go for a winter camp! I wasn't packed and ready to go until after noon, so I couldn't do anything too ambitious or distant. I headed to a place not far from Ouray where I knew that a short ~1 mile, 400 vertical foot hike up from the trailhead would take me to a nice meadow with views of towering peaks across the valley.

Part of my motivation for this quick winter camp was to test out some new winter gear I've acquired recently. With temps dropping as low as 5º F (-15º C) this night was a good test, and I was pleased that I was toasty warm all night long. My goal is to have my kit so dialed that winter camping is not just borderline survival, but actually comfortable! So far so good. If you're interested I've written in more depth about my winter backpacking gear here.

Colorado (and much of the western U.S.) is in the midst of an "atmospheric river" winter storm that has dumped 2-3 feet of snow across Colorado so far. This morning Mount Sneffels made an appearance during a brief break in the storm.

The warm and dry Indian summer here in the San Juan Mountains came to an abrupt end in mid-October with a big snowfall in the high peaks. Then so far in November there's been a series of prolonged snow storms and it finally feels like winter has settled in.

At the end of September my buddy Dave and his friend Eric invited Claudia and I to join them on a two-day rafting trip down the mellow "Ruby Horsethief" stretch of the Colorado River from Loma, Colorado (near Grand Junction) to Westwater just over the Utah border. Dave planned the entire trip so Claudia and I just had to show up with our ducky (an inflatable canoe) - nice!

We got lucky with perfect weather and no wind, so for the most part we could just kick back, sip beer, and enjoy the views while the lazy river took us down through the canyons. It was cool to float past Mee and Knowles Canyons, which I just backpacked through this last April. Floating is a much more chill way to travel through this canyon country, that's for sure!

After our 5-day trek in the Sangre de Cristos, we drove down to the southern Sangres in New Mexico to spend three days relaxing in the town of Taos. The highlights were visiting the fascinating Taos Pueblo, eating delicious New Mexican food (including the best chili relleno I've ever had at Antonio's), and strolling around browsing the various art galleries and stores. Always a nice place to visit!

Yesterday we had some more thunderstorms roll through during the afternoon, and when it started clearing up right before sunset there was a brilliant double rainbow over town and fresh snow on Sneffels! In recent weeks I've seen the Sneffels Range briefly covered in hail several times after thunderstorms, but this was the first actual snow up there this summer (you can tell by the way it's caked onto the steep rock faces where hail would just slide off). The temps have been cooling off lately and autumn feels like it's right around the corner!

What a cutie!

The weather has been exciting here in the San Juan Mountains lately, with lots of monsoon rain, lightning, and thunder passing over throughout the days and nights!

With a couple days this week between family visits and itching for some alpine exercise, I spontaneously headed out for a quick overnight backpack trip in the Sneffels Range yesterday. I returned to a familiar quiet basin, but rather than taking the usual valley trail to get there, I explored a new (to me) circuitous route over a couple high passes. Summer is in full swing and I'm excited to get out for more backpacking soon!

Typically June is hot and dry here in southwest Colorado, but in the last few weeks we've had quite a lot of strong rain storms, including an early onset of the monsoon pattern flowing up from Mexico. Daily thunderstorms and rain have been the norm lately! I'll take that any day over dry heat and hazy air.

In other news, a big house project has taken over my life this last month (thus my lack of new photos). Hopefully I can wrap this up in a couple weeks and get back up into the mountains!

This last Thursday I took Claudia to see her first concert at the famous Red Rocks Amphitheatre near Denver; we saw the second night of two sold-out shows of Lord Huron. If you're not familiar with Red Rocks, it's a spectacular concert venue built between two gigantic sandstone formations jutting out of a mountainside with a view overlooking Denver. The band was really great but the weather also put on an incredible show with a massive thunderstorm flashing nearly constant lightning out in the distance throughout the entire evening! Such an overwhelmingly impressive evening. The next morning we saw on the news that while we were enjoying the show at Red Rocks, that thunderstorm was hammering northeastern Denver with golfball-sized hail!

(Here's a good video I found on Instagram that shows the crazy lightning show from Red Rocks that night).

The snowpack in the San Juan Mountains is roughly 60% of average for this date and appears to be melting quickly in late May. The snow is also looking quite a bit worse for wear compared to last week, now that some buried dust layers have been revealed on the surface. Nevertheless there's still a lot of snow up high and definitely still some fun turns to be had!

Lots of dramatic skies lately around Ridgway and the northern San Juan Mountains!

I often shoot this same (or very similar) scene from my backyard, and it's always a pain to focus stack a bunch of photos to get the foreground sagebrush, pinyon pines, and background mountains all in focus, especially when it's windy and the trees are blowing around. For this reason, I often use a Pentax 75mm medium format lens with a Fotodiox tilt-shift adapter on my Sony camera. The lens tilt allows me to get sharp detail in both the foreground and background all in one shot, and as an added bonus the Pentax 75mm lens is one of the sharpest lenses in my entire collection!

Last night was an aurora for the masses, as the strongest geomagnetic storm in two decades filled the night skies with auroras far more south than normal (or north in the southern hemisphere). Here in southern Colorado we could only see a very faint reddish hue in the sky with our naked eyes, but the camera's more sensitive sensor revealed a bright magenta aurora over Ridgway and the Sneffels Range, casting a magenta glow over the snowy mountains! Since it's been rainy and snowy here lately, we were very lucky to have a window of clear skies during the strongest period of northern lights. This was quite a rare sight to see here in the San Juan Mountains!

Spring corn season is upon us in southwest Colorado as the high jeep roads are getting plowed out allowing easier access to higher peaks and steeper lines. On Friday some friends and I got windblasted as we rock-hopped our way up this fun little peak, but were rewarded with a nice soft descent back to the truck.

So nice to get outside and play in the snow with my friends again the last couple days!

When I come home after spending time in other mountain ranges, my perception of Mount Sneffels and the Sneffels Range always shifts a bit depending on where I've just been. For a random example, after time spent in the Wasatch Range of Utah, the San Juans always look so high and burly to me when I first come back here. On the other hand, we recently returned from three months in the Alps of Tyrol, Austria and my initial impression was that the Sneffels Range looked kinda short and stubby!

That said, spending time in other mountain ranges also makes me appreciate the unique qualities of my home mountains. Mount Sneffels isn't a particularly big peak compared to many of the behemoths in the Alps, but yet it has a certain rugged charm to it, with its symmetrical profile and its many rocky ramparts and spires leading up to the summit. Yesterday morning as Sneffels emerged from a clearing snowstorm with clouds blowing over the face of the mountain, its ruggedness was accentuated and then it looked to me like a pretty big peak indeed!