Backpacking Conditions
Live weather at trailheads across Colorado, Oregon, and Texas.
Deep Time · What You're Standing On
The geological story beneath the boots — Colorado, Oregon, and Texas.
Island arcs colliding — the basement forms. Colorado near the equator, adjacent to Antarctica. The rock you climb in Royal Gorge was never sediment.
Ancestral Rockies as tall as the Alps shed red arkose fans westward. Equatorial. The red rock of Garden of the Gods is this moment, frozen.
Alluvial floodplain. Braided rivers from western highlands. Stegosaurus and Allosaurus. World's richest dinosaur fauna buried in Morrison mud.
The Western Interior Seaway splits North America. Six hundred miles of shallow water from the Gulf to the Arctic. Mosasaurs and ammonites where Denver now stands.
Oregon's tropical jungle: 40 ft rainfall, rhinoceroses, palm trees. Texas volcanics punch through. Colorado's Florissant buries a redwood forest in volcanic ash.
Flood basalt: fissures in eastern Oregon pour lava for 11 million years. Enough to bury the entire Lower 48 under 100 feet. The Columbia River Gorge is carved through it.
Mazama erupts — Crater Lake forms. The Klamath people watched. Last major volcanic event in the Oregon Cascades visible from Portland on a clear day.
Backpacking Forecast — Summer Conditions
Current conditions at wilderness trailheads. Click any marker for full details.
7 wilderness areas from Rawah in the north to Weminuche in the San Juans.
Grants Pass hub through Kalmiopsis, Wild Rogue, and the Siskiyou high country.
Big Bend to the Guadalupes — Chihuahuan desert, Permian reef, and volcanic Chisos highlands.
