Its a busy Labor Day weekend for me but I have the itch to camp.

After shooting photos for a client in the morning i grabb my pack and hastily shove my gear in. Luckily, in the spring I got on kick making a bunch of meals in anticipation of hiking season. I grab one of those and some oats and hop in the car. An hour later I’m at the Moffat Tunnel trailhead ready to hit the trail. The beauty of living in Boulder.

I’ve been to James Peak Wilderness before and I know there are multiple lakes with awesome campsites within 3-4 miles of the trailhead. This time I’m headed to the Crater Lake area, about 3 miles from the car.

It’s late afternoon by this point and most people I pass are headed back to the trailhead. After 2 miles of steady gradual incline I get to the turn off to crater lakes. From here the trail becomes more steep before eventually flattening out near the lakes.

Unsurprisingly, there is a lot of activity around the lakes. On another weekend it could be a nice place to camp but for tonight I’m going another .5 mile and 400ft up to Upper Crater Lake.

This is the steepest part of the climb and at lake level it becomes more of a rock hopping experience than actual trail. Not a lot in the way of flat sites but I find a little spot for my tent near the east side of the lake just past the outflow. The bonus is no one else is up here camping.

By the time I finish dinner it is already fairly dark and the Milky Way is starting to emerge. The job I was working this morning was using a Canon 5DS R with an 16-35mm zoom. Perfect for having a bit of fun messing around with long exposure shots while the sky is still moonless. This is a great camera, it’s completely impractical to bring into backcountry but, hey, what the hell.

The next day I make it out early to get home. From door to door the whole trip was only 20 hours but was a great reset.

If you go:

One of the biggest perks of being married to an Australian is, you guessed it, having a great excuse to visit Australia. This time around given my work schedule and K writing up her thesis we’re setting off for over a month.

We spent the first few days in Melbourne and then headed off on a meandering road trip (our favorite kind) through the mountains and along the coast to Sydney.

As we drove north through the Yarra ranges we stumbled upon Cathedral Ranges State Park. I’m certainly happy we did: a great park with hiking, camping and backpacking options. We decided to head up Ned’s Gully to Ned’s Peak. About 5.5 miles round trip and Ned wasn’t messing around, his gully is pretty steep. I love when you get many different microclimates on a trail and this one did not disappoint. A thick fern forest in the gully, rock scrambling and dry eucalyptus forest in the middle and a view at the top. We didn’t have time to take the trail all the way up to Cathedral Peak and Razorback Ridge but that looked like some rock-hopping fun to be had.

The next day we drove to Kosciuszko National Park to summit Mt. Kosciuszko, the highest point in Australia at 7,310ft. I wasn’t expecting a hard hike but I wasn’t expecting it to be this easy. The trail is an old road, very flat and graded the whole way to the top. The views at the top were spectacular. Open alpine peaks with views in every direction.

We camped just down the road from the trailhead and it was a clear, crisp night and the stars, which are normally phenomenal in Australia, were even more stunning than normal.

For the next three days we poked up the coast towards Sydney. Lots of little places to camp along the many beaches. Australia, you know how to make a good beach.

If you go:

20 Hour Getaway

Endless Summer - An Aussie Road Trip