MATTHEW TANGEMAN PHOTO
Tavish Hansen bouldering in Bears Ears in late March.
MAY 2026 - SPRING IN SWCO
It’s a beautiful day - dark, stormy clouds contrast with the bright green buds of spring. Thunder occasionally rumbles, wind occasionally jettisons the rain sideways into my office window. The showers have been off and on all morning, but the Dolores River, which runs through my backyard, has swollen enough that I know this is more than just a localized shower. Finally.
A friend told me ‘beautiful’ maybe isn’t the best adjective for the day despite our mutual love for dark and rainy days - she suggested wistful, poignant, or delightful. All good choices and all applicable to such a day. Pick your favorite. Or maybe suggest something different if you’re one of those folks who would rather every day be bluebird. As for me, ‘beautiful’ is one of the most overused words in my stingy vocabulary and I intend to keep it that way.
An especially large coihue (variety of Antarctic beech) tree emerging from the clouds in the Cochamo Valley. I sat here for about 30 minutes before the clouds were just right. When I met back up with friends, waiting for me further down the trail, they asked why I was hiking so slow…
In mid-March I returned to my home here in Southwest Colorado and am feeling like I’m just now finding the time to sit down and collect my thoughts. While I had really hoped to find some winter to come back to, I’ve embraced the dysfunctional seasonality and have found contentment through quality time in the desert, hosting friends visiting from abroad, getting some wilderness medicine certs done, and swimming in the snowmelt of the Dolores.
I’m spending a lot of time in Mancos these days - I’ve been working on a wonderfully fulfilling video series for the Medicine Horse Center, along with starting a new short film project for Mancos Valley Resources. Like last year’s project with the Montezuma Inspire Coalition, these local projects are some of my favorite and provide an opportunity to write yet another little love letter to the place I live and the people who live here.
Alex Moss exploring options (none of them solid) while on a likely first ascent on an unnamed tower in Bears Ears.
MESAS TO MOUNTAINTOPS SPEAKER SERIES.
A self portrait somewhere in the Chalten Massif, February 2025.
I’ll be slinging tall tales, real photos, and yet to be determined scuttlebutt at the Dolores Bike Hostel on Monday, June 1 at 7:30 PM. Truly, yet to be determined - I’m still workshopping what I’m actually going to be talking about (not unlike this newsletter), but I’ll be putting together some form of a slideshow from the Four Corners region and beyond. A lot of cool places and outings go overlooked here in this quiet corner of SWCO, and I do hope to highlight some of those.
Packrafter and adventurer Steve ‘Doom’ Fassbinder will be there doing the same - we’ve never met, but I’ve heard a lot of talk of his antics during my time in this area and I reckon he might just steal the show.
Should be a good time! See you there.
RECENT ADVENTURES.
IN THE VALLEY OF THE BEAST.
Felipe getting inverted in front of the nearly one mile tall El Monstruo, the largest wall in Chile. Doesn’t look so big from here!
“The trail up from the Cochamo Valley ends at Paso Querido. South of there, the map gets a little lower resolution - and so begins the Valley of the Beast, a truly wild, temperate rainforest tributary of the iconic Rio Puelo. No road nor trail will guide you through this valley, it remains one of those rare low-elevation bastions of mystery so precious in the modern Americas. Standing on a granite outcrop overlooking the valley, you can feel it. It permeates the chest, the soul. I'm greeted with and immediately reminded of one of my favorite things: the sound of a river rushing far, far below me in a steep and narrow valley…”