|
Post by cweston on Sept 5, 2020 17:36:36 GMT -8
Three places I've returned to repeatedly: The Gore Range, the Sangres (where I am currently!) and the North Cascades. My office for the next week:
|
|
driftwoody
Trail Wise!
Take the path closer to the edge, especially if less traveled
Posts: 14,974
|
Post by driftwoody on Sept 5, 2020 18:44:02 GMT -8
Haystack Rock in foreground along Auxier Ridge with Double Arch in distance on opposite ridge, Red River Gorge:
|
|
|
Post by starwalker on Sept 5, 2020 19:45:07 GMT -8
Ouachita Trail is my close go to place, the Oklahoma section especially.
Zion National Park--West Rim and East Rim Trails are my I'd like to go back and hike them. (Of course, the East Rim Trail is closed going down into the Canyon from Observation Point now. I've heard nothing about when it will be reopened after the slide across the trail.
I'd like to hike more in Rocky Mountain National Park, only had one hike in the southwest corner of the Park.
Philmont Scout Ranch is off limits for non trek members, but I'd like to climb some of those mountains again there.
|
|
echo
Trail Wise!
Posts: 3,330
|
Post by echo on Sept 5, 2020 22:05:21 GMT -8
There are smaller, more intimate places where I have taken everyone I ever loved over the last thirty years. A small redwood grove, a cabin on the beach, a fern lined canyon. And it’s become an odd, melancholy feeling to stand with my grand babies where I once stood as a young woman with my grandmother, my fathers sisters, my husband, my newborns, etc. Cycles of my life returning changed greatly to spots where the very rocks are recognized Back in Wyoming there were places too, a lake in the Beartooths, a waterfall, a fishing hole up the a north Fork, a picnic spot. Places my Grandfather went to as a young boy, where his mom came as a bride and where not much will probably have changed centuries after I’m dead. I used to write, and once I stood in one of those spots and a fragment of a sentence flitted through my mind but never became anything more, “Last night I passed my Father’s Ghost, walking hand in hand with mine,”
|
|
jazzmom
Trail Wise!
a.k.a. TigerFan
Posts: 3,059
|
Post by jazzmom on Sept 6, 2020 6:51:51 GMT -8
For me, it's the Grand Canyon and Sleeping Bear Sand Dunes. After having every single trip cancelled in 2020, we're finally going to Sleeping Bear next weekend and then the Grand Canyon later in the month. I'm so excited I can barely stand it!
|
|
|
Post by autumnmist on Sept 6, 2020 7:23:13 GMT -8
echo, your post is so inspirational. I too have special places like that, especially Lake Michigan in the Grand Haven and Saugatuck areas (before the city's character changed). My father grew up East of that area; I still have family there, and the beaches offer a lot of good memories. I found one beach that was isolated, and a good place to wander, then set out a blanket and spend time reading while listening to the waves lap on the shores. As for you, that area brings back memories dating back to childhood.
|
|
balzaccom
Trail Wise!
Waiting for spring...
Posts: 4,501
|
Post by balzaccom on Sept 6, 2020 15:23:10 GMT -8
Places I've visited multiple times:. Lassen National Park, Grand Canyon and the rest of Canyon Country, Mesa Verde, Death Valley....and endlessly, the Sierra Nevada.
|
|
|
Post by hikerchick395 on Sept 6, 2020 17:52:51 GMT -8
Moved here over 32 years ago to endlessly revisit...the Eastern Sierra.
That said...Utah's red rock country calls a lot too.
|
|
Travis
Trail Wise!
WYOMING NATIVE
Posts: 2,578
|
Post by Travis on Sept 7, 2020 7:41:03 GMT -8
Plenty of great places in this thread.
I might add the Snowy Range, Wyoming. It’s a small mountain range 30-50 miles west of Laramie, where I went to college. If I had to place a fine line on when I began backpacking, it would be in the Snowies when I was 18 to 19 years old.
They were the location of my first group backpacking trip, first solo backpacking trip, and first winter backpacking trip on cross-country skis — all in the early 1970s. The range is crossed by a paved road that is fortunately closed in wintertime. The isolation I felt in winter is rather spoiled by the summer crowds that can drive within a mile of 11 to 12 thousand-foot peaks in summer.
Small as it is, the range is packed with memories of solo cowboy-camping under the stars along off-trail routes that I struggle to remember. My last visit was 19 years ago in the week after the 9/11 attacks. It’s a sign that I’m far too busy for my own good that I’ve gone this long without paying another visit. Maybe someday.
|
|
gabby
Trail Wise!
Posts: 4,537
|
Post by gabby on Sept 7, 2020 8:26:53 GMT -8
Yep. For a while, central Colorado was my second home, but I haven't gotten out often enough lately.
|
|
|
Post by absarokanaut on Sept 7, 2020 8:32:08 GMT -8
I don't go many "new" places anymore. Here are the arguably two remotest peaks of the 48 states fom an 11,000' summit loop day hike I've done 3 times this summer. I had not been to Mt. Leidy for a few years before July 11th this year. Another place I've returned to dozens of times. You can see 10 mountain ranges up here. This is arguably the greatest terrestrial view of the length of the Teton Range.
|
|
echo
Trail Wise!
Posts: 3,330
|
Post by echo on Sept 7, 2020 18:48:47 GMT -8
This will sound morbid, but isn’t really to me. When I was a child my grandfather, who was 65 the year I was born, would take me fishing, or up to check his trap lines, or just to show me the places he’d played as a young boy, worked as a young man, camped and hunted and loved. There was one summer in my mom’s childhood when gas was rationed and no one came to Yellowstone much and they drove up and set up camp and lived in the park the whole summer and they would tell me stories everywhere we went. Often the stories were dramatic and filled with tragedy. Every place you know for 65 years starts to have memories of not just life, but of death. A accident here, a murder there, a search and rescue where the child was never found. I knew the name of every peak and Valley in a wide stretch of the Yellowstone to the Big Horn Mountains area and the human toll of the the place as well.
Then I moved here, I didn’t know anything. Didn’t know which plants were edible or the names of the hills, didn’t know that the Marsh nearby was the site of one of the most deadly massacres of a native village, didn’t know that the Brother Jonathan sank with its gold and its camels and its prostitutes and large human death toll, didn’t know that Japan had fire bombed Mt. Emily, or that a deadly Tsunami had destroyed the down town. Had no clue that the Opera house had been destroyed by earthquake, fire, tsunami and water spout before they gave up and stopped rebuilding it. Didn’t know that the Ship Ashore resort had been the location of a mass shooting, or that fern canyon had hosted the filming of Jurassic Park, Lost World, or that a Ewoks frolicked in our redwoods, once. Now 31 years of living here, those stories and more personal ones have made every place I go speak to me, “remember the lives lived here.”
|
|
walkswithblackflies
Trail Wise!
Resident terrorist-supporting eco-freak bootlicker
Posts: 6,931
|
Post by walkswithblackflies on Sept 8, 2020 5:01:26 GMT -8
I'm blessed to live in an area with so many trails within an hour's drive. Too many to count. So, contrary to the theme of this thread, I've made a point to hike on new (to me) trails this year. :-)
Otherwise, I have a rotation of 5 areas I go when time is tight, and another 2 when I want a more robust run/hike.
Out of state, I'm drawn to the San Juans.
|
|
desert dweller
Trail Wise!
Power to the Peaceful...Hate does not create.
Posts: 6,291
|
Post by desert dweller on Sept 8, 2020 6:39:03 GMT -8
|
|
|
Post by cweston on Sept 8, 2020 7:10:40 GMT -8
His wife gave me some of his ashes. Me and Vagabond, who used to hang out on the forums, did a hike to Bear Spring so that I could put those ashes in the creek below the spring. I try to make it to Bear Spring every year or two. It hasn't changed much. That's very moving. I have told my son who backpacks with me that I would be delighted if some of my ashes were to make their way to Bubble Lake or some other remote corner of the Gore Range. With any luck, my kids will be too old to do the job, and some hypothetical grandchildren will have to step up.
|
|