Welcome to the Colorado backcountry

The vast acreage of wilderness and backcountry beauty in Colorado make it one of the more popular locations for camping, backpacking, and day-hiking.

In addition to a eight National Parks and Monuments, Colorado boasts an equal number of Wilderness Areas, millions of acres of National Forest and BLM land, and over three dozen state parks.

From mountains to deserts, and grasslands to canyons, one could spend a lifetime hiking the trails of Colorado and not cover all of them.

Another snowshoe outing in Colorado's North Fork valley




Several miles below McClure Pass, in the North Fork Valley, the landscape is a mix of ranches and public lands.  There's a little known trail here, straight west of Chair Mountain, that we tried to find yesterday.  No luck on that front, but we did have a good time snowshoeing over the ridges and through the gullies of this area near the Ragged Mountains.  Breaking trail is hard work, and our best progress was made when we rotated the lead.  Though less than six weeks from the winter solstice, the sun is already climbing in the sky, and despite the mix of clouds yesterday, I managed to get a little sunburn on my face.