Author: Derek Honeycutt

This weekend, I decided to play it somewhat easy and head up into the White Mountains to visit the Ancient Bristlecone Pine Forest. I ended up doing about 5 and a half miles of hiking, checking out these amazing trees, some over 4000 years old, along with a good amount of fun driving. The following day, I decided to also go and visit Hot Creek up in the Long Valley Caldera.

On Friday evening, I packed up and headed down to Mono Lake. Saturday morning, I woke up early and drove into Yosemite National Park, where I ended up hiking up to Vogelsang Pass and back in a day. It was a wonderful although difficult hike to cap off the summer.

With several weeks of hiking and backpacking over, I headed into Bend, OR to rest for a couple of weeks. But I couldn’t stay resting for too long, so I headed down to Northern California, and ended up at Lassen Volcanic National Park this weekend. I ended up hiking up Lassen Peak on Saturday and Cinder Cone on Sunday before finding camp nearby for the week.

For Labor Day Weekend, I decided to head over to Hells Canyon National Recreation Area. Since visiting the area last year, doing a large hike has been on my list of things I’ve been wanting to do. With some research, I decided to do the Seven Devils Loop, looping around the Seven Devils Mountains on the Idaho side of the canyon. Along with taking several side trips along the way, I had a difficult but amazing weekend of backpacking.

For “Eclipse Weekend”, I decided to spend 3 nights and 4 days out backpacking in the Sawtooth Wilderness. I planned out a large loop route that would give me a wonderful view of several sites throughout the wilderness, including a great view for the eclipse itself.

On Saturday, I woke up early and headed to the trailhead, intending to hike up to Hyndman Peak, the high point of Central Idaho’s Pioneer Mountains. The overall hike ended up being a difficult one, with more constant beauty than I had expected. It has easily become one of my favorite hikes of the year so far!

Originally I intended to spend a weekend in Yellowstone doing some hiking, but as I had to go find usable internet reception on Friday for work, I gave up and headed to Central Idaho. I found a lovely boondocking site in Sun Valley, allowing 16 days stay. On Sunday, I ended up also going on a hike nearby, to Pioneer Cabin–an historic ski lodge high up in the Pioneer Mountains.

Through all of the hiking and adventure in Colorado, I finally decided I had enough of it and moved on this past weekend. With one night at Rabbit Ears Pass outside of Steamboat Springs, I spent Saturday traveling through Wyoming to Grand Teton. After dealing with some unexpected car troubles, on Monday, I finally made myself to a boondocking site at Red Rock Pass in Idaho.