One of my favorite short hiking trails in Gilpin County is a nondescript one that[…]
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Canyonlands National Park: Taylor Canyon Loop
Part One, Route Outline and Preparation
Of all times of year, I decided to spend 3 days in late November backpacking in Canyonlands National Park, near Moab, UT. For those who have never been there, it is a remote area in eastern Utah with a wide expanse of canyons of various types and swaths of desert. The Colorado and Green Rivers converge in the heart of it, dividing it into three districts. The largest, The Island in the Sky, is most readily accessible from Moab, and features a mix of high desert and deep canyons. Needles, about 60 miles south of Moab, is known for its spires of sandstone and sedimentary rock. The Maze is accessible from the town of Green River and is the most remote, rugged, and dangerous part of the park in terms of hiking hazards and inaccessibility for rescue teams.
Moab has been one of my favorite outdoor destinations for quite some time, and this area is a large part of the reason. Arches National Park gets more attention, but Canyonlands offers more opportunities for outdoor expeditions, dark skies for stargazing, and sheer volume of territory. As it is also a lower-profile national park, it also tends to have fewer crowds, especially in the late Fall and Winter months. But it offers no fewer wonders than others in the Rocky Mountain region. Additionally, there is an array of land parcels under the Bureau of Land Management that offer additional camping and hiking activities. One I have spent some time with is Hamburger Rock, near the entrance of the Needles District.
With three days free and a weather forecast that was cold, but dry and clear, I chose to do the Taylor Canyon loop in the Island in the Sky District. Not a designated route per se, it combines sections of four trails: the Alcove Spring trail, the Taylor Canyon jeep road, Upheaval Canyon, and the southern clockwise half of the Syncline Trail.
You can check out the route at AllTrails. At 19.4 miles, with a 1200 foot elevation loss at the beginning and a similar gain at the end, this is a challenging route. I decided to break it up into 4 legs over 3 days, for each of the sections of trail.
One challenge in preparation was the gear kit. As there are no reliable water sources on the route (the Green River does not count as usable water source, for reasons I’ll get to in the article for Day 2), that means packing in at least 6 liters of water. The nighttime temperatures were also predicted to get into the low 20s F to upper teens, so having good cold weather gear for the nighttime was essential. These two additions to my normal backpack added an extra 15-20 pounds, bringing the total pack weight to around 60 pounds. Still within my ability, but definitely more than my normal limit for pack weight. As I am a budget hiker and backpacker, I didn’t spring for big-ticket items from companies such as Big Agnes, which would have weighed less but cost far more than I have spent on my gear kit. Others with deeper pockets could replicate my gear kit with a possible weight savings of 10-15 pounds. However, that is what the gym is for.
Next time: Part 2, Alcove Spring to Moses and Zeus
Coming Attractions
It’s been a while since I’ve added content here, but I’ve been at work figuring out what is next. Here’s what’s in the works:
- I’ve decided to retire the Tangled Media blog for now. My attention on the media business has waned as I’ve put my personal focus on other interests. The content is still available and searchable under that category, but for the time being I won’t be adding more to it.
- The Wanders with Moose photo store hasn’t really gone anywhere, so I’m setting that aside as well. I’ll still post photo content on this site, but setting up the store for purchase is something I’ll come back to another time.
- I’ve started a new blog here, Wanders With Marmots. This is a companion to my Instagram account, which I encourage you to follow at https://www.instagram.com/wanderswithmarmots/. I cover outdoor activity, photography, travel, and art. With the occasional cute animal or humorous story.
I’m working on content for the blog which will cover recent activities, like backpacking Canyonlands NP, looking for tarantulas in southeastern Colorado, and stupid hiker stories. Please subscribe for future posts or watch for it on Instagram.
Preview of things to come…
It’s been quiet here for a while. I’ve been busy with a number of projects, and there are 3 announcements of things to expect as I emerge from the quiet.
First, I’ve been looking at various options for starting my photography store, Wanders With Moose. When fully launched, it will feature images for sale as well as a gallery of images free to use (so long as I get attribution). You can see a preview of it here: https://maxmonclair.viewbug.com/. That said, while I am currently using ViewBug for it, I am not terribly happy with the results and the difficulty of setting up photos for licensing and sale. Fortunately, their Terms of Service do not deprive me of ownership of the images posted, so I’ll still use it to display photos and will use it to drive exposure to the store, once established.
Second, I’ve been spending a lot of time working on a story that I’ve been trying to decide whether to make it a novella or a full novel. I started working on it for the 2015 National Novel Writing Month challenge. My goal is to have it ready to shop around for publication by the end of 2020. Contact me directly if you’d like to find out more.
Third, there’s been a lot in the media field: 5G, must-see programming on Netflix, the perilous challenge of cable and satellite programming, the ever-crowded OTT broadcasting field, and more than I can list here. That means a lot to write about. I will be working to revive the Tangled Media blog (which admittedly didn’t get much of a start). Keep your eyes here or on my Twitter feed for details.
2020 is going to be a wild ride, for sure.
Image of the Week: December 8, 2018
One of my favorite short hiking trails in Gilpin County is a nondescript one that begins two miles south of Rollinsville, off of Hwy 119. The only marker for the trailhead is a sign warning to be safe with campfires (though on occasion, the sign goes missing, leaving the sign holder empty). The trails are sometimes hard to discern, but one of them leads to an overlook above South Boulder Creek, looking back on Rollinsville, 500 feet below.
This overlook also affords a panoramic view of the Continental Divide, extending from James Peak to the south, past Long’s Peak, 50 miles in the distance (seen here). This is only a snapshot of the fantastic view of the Divide in early spring.
AT&T, owner of DirecTV, signals full shift to Internet TV
“We’ve launched our last satellite,” John Donovan, CEO of AT&T Communications, said during a presentation to analysts.
This statement signals an expected shift in AT&T’s broadcasting strategy away from traditional cable and satellite delivery. Over the last 5 years, Over The Top live video streaming services, like AT&T’s DirecTV Now and Dish Network’s Sling TV, have picked up a growing segment of the viewing market that has been abandoning direct broadcast. According to a March, 2018, report by the Video Advertising Bureau, streaming-only audiences, which account for OTT viewers and streaming on-demand providers like Hulu and Netflix, tripled since 2013, when they began tracking the cord-cutting trend, to 14.1 million homes. While this still accounts for only 11% of viewing households, and a small segment of the overall industry landscape, where viewers subscribe to a combination of traditional and streaming services, the precipitous rise of those leaving cable and DBS has raised concerns for broadcasters and advertisers who have relied on this delivery model for over 7 decades.
For its part, AT&T’s acquisition of DirecTV had less to do with gaining dominance in the DBS market and more to do with its push to dominate both broadcasting content and distribution. According to Chris Wagner, managing partner at the consulting firm OTT Advisors, the real prize in the deal was assets like DirecTV’s NFL Sunday Ticket. However it is questionable whether DirecTV’s programming assets are worth the investment, given the falling numbers of subscribers, which create challenges for AT&T in its effort to recoup its investment. As pointed out in the blog Awful Announcing, the $1.5 billion per year contract AT&T has with the NFL requires a subscription pool that can sustain the $300+/season price tag through the end of 2022. While DirecTV has not officially released its subscriber numbers for NFL Sunday Ticket, AA reported a rumored 2 million subscribers. Forbes reported a similar number at the time the current contract was signed in 2014, raising questions about the value of this service for revenue or for retention.
While this is just one example, it points to a serious vulnerability in DBS’s programming assets. In the case of DirecTV’s NFL offerings, which have given it a market advantage to its rival Dish Network, AT&T faces competition from, of all sources, its partner, the NFL. The NFL now offers a competitive package directly to viewers for $49.99 per season with NFL Game Pass, threatening to cannibalize its NFL Sunday Ticket deal with DirecTV. However, AT&T seems to have seen the handwriting on the wall with such content deals, forcing a hard bargain with DirecTV’s sole competitor in the DBS market, Dish Network. The current contract impasse, resulted in the removal of HBO and Cinemax channels from Dish and its OTT service Sling TV. The stage for this was set not only in last summer’s contentious $47 billion AT&T-Time Warner merger, but in the meteoric rise of HBO’s own OTT service, HBO Now. Launching in December, 2015 with an estimated 800 thousand subscribers, by February, 2018, HBO Now reached the 5 million mark. While a small fraction of HBO’s 149 million subscribers worldwide, the rapid rise of its OTT service has given AT&T-Time Warner as view of what’s possible in the emerging cord-cutting viewership market.
The shift in the broadcasting model has given traditional providers reason to pause. “In 2008, about 95 percent of total entertainment consumption was coming through linear broadcast constructs,” said John Stankey, CEO of AT&T’s Time Warner Media division. “Today, it’s about 55 percent. … It is really important that we position ourselves from a technical perspective to accommodate that.”
Image of the Week: December 2, 2018
While walking up the 16th Street Mall in downtown Denver a few weeks ago, I caught this out of the corner of my eye as I passed an alley. Not screaming for attention, it was just waiting impishly to see if anyone would notice. These two kids were probably trying to figure out if it was a giant Lego head or a balloon.
Denver Comic Con Announces New Name, 2019 Dates
Pop Culture Classroom, the organization behind Denver’s premiere annual event for fans of comics, movies, TV and other media, has announced ticket sales are now open for the convention formerly known as Denver Comic Con. This year, the convention, now in its 8th year, will be called Denver Pop Culture Con.
In PCC’s October 8th “Dialogue With the Director” post, Director Christina Angel indicated that the name change had been considered ever since Pop Culture Classroom changed its name in 2014 from its former designation, Comic Book Classroom. Angel pointed out that while comics remain the main focus of the group and the annual convention, the mission and breadth of PCC as an educational organization expands to all corners of popular culture. In an FAQ about the name change, the recent lawsuit by the organizers of San Diegos’ Comic Con against the group behind Salt Lake City’s event by the same name was a consideration, but not the deciding factor.
To be sure, the former Denver Comic Con featured an increasing presence of TV and movie character actors, writers and producers, along with panels discussing themes beyond the pages of graphic novels. In addition to events related to comic book writers and artists, DCC 2018 featured panels addressing mental health in horror movies, promoting women writers, and a 3-panel series on UFO and supernatural investigations. Check out DCC 2018’s highlights reel.
Tickets are available at the DPCC 2019 site. The convention schedule, as well as guests and attractions, will be posted at the DPCC site as it is developed.
New Image Gallery added
I’ve just added my first sample gallery. Check it out under the “Gallery” link above.
Image of the Week: November 24, 2018
Note: Last week’s featured image was posted on Thursday. Starting this week, I will try to post this every Saturday
I don’t do Black Friday. Fighting crowds for stuff I don’t need is not the epilogue I could use for a week of house cleaning, food shopping & preparations and feasting. Most years, it ends on a high note and dashing it in a mad rush I may not come out of alive seems rather perverse to me.
So this year, we took my wife Laura’s uncle, who came in from out of town, to Central City, just a bit down Highway 119 from our house. Being a fellow history buff, he wanted to see what Central City had to offer for museums and historic sites. One place we visited was the Gilpin County Historical Museum, a few hundred feet east of the old county courthouse. Upstairs from the tiny museum was the much larger gallery of the Gilpin County Arts Association. The space is a combination of the former residence of legendary Sheriff William Z Cozens, the original Gilpin County Courthouse at Washington Hall, and the first jail. The GCAA has operated an art gallery at this location continuously since 1947. You can find out more at the Gilpin County Arts Association.
The image of the week is a permanent water sculpture created by the late local artist Angelo di Benedetto. It utilizes the shape of the mountainside the building is adapted to for its form. If you’re ever in Central City between the hours of 10am-6pm most days, drop in at Washington Hall at 117 Eureka St. Even if the artwork is not your thing, the preserved early settlement architecture is itself worth a visit.
Image of the Week: November 16, 2018
Fall starts early in Gilpin County, CO. While trees are still mostly green down in Denver and Boulder, the mountainsides turn from soft gold to fiery red. This photo was taken in late September, 2018. The leaves are gone now, and now snowcaps are present on the higher peaks with light cover on the ground.