Hiking around Engineer Mountain, Sept. 6-9

This semester I am teaching the Block Semester at Fort Lewis. The Block Semester involves students taking 5 classes/15 credits together. The first nine credits are taken in the first half of the semester and allow us to go out on three extended backpacking trips ranging from 4-10 days in length. The format for the three classes - Wilderness Expedition, Adventure Leadership, and Adventure Instruction - allows the students to get hands-on experience planning all aspects of the trips, practicing leadership skills, and teaching their peers. It's a great design, but makes for a very intense semester for them and for the faculty.

The first trip we did was a four day backpacking trip around Engineer Mountain which is between Durango and Silverton, CO. It was a beautiful weekend with perfect sunny, clear weather. The nights were a bit cold, but still nice. The students were awesome and for some of them it was their first backpacking trip!

View of Engineer Mountain

My low point of the whole trip occured in the first five minutes of the hike. I had my small camera with me, a Canon SD750, and the lens jammed as soon as I took it out for a photo. I replaced the battery and was able to get the lens back in, but something was wrong and all the photos turned out blurry. The four here are the best of 'em, but they are a bit out of focus. After the trip I sent the camera back to Canon and even though it was 13 months old (one month out of warranty) they still repaired it for free and I had it back within a week just in time for the third trip.

View of nearby mountains

Hiking towards Jura Knob

Jura Knob in the background

The whole hike was such beautiful, lush green and it looked stunning against the red rocks of Jura Knob. The photos don't quite do it justice. We were planning to hike to the top of Jura Knob, but the group decided against it in favor of a bit more down time. I thought Jura Knob was more stunning than Engineer and I would love to go back and cimb it. It's a fairly simple climb and could even be done in a day.