This last saturday, my cousin and I went up on the Roan Plateau outside of Rifle Colorado. The Roan Plateau is also know as the Naval Oil Shale Reserve. 55,186 acres of the Plateau are going to be leased out for natural gas exploration on Aug 14th 2008. We thought we would go see it before the oil companies go in. I was very surprised when I went on top of the plateau as I was expecting a high mountain desert of sage and pinon pine. I was wrong.

We started in the town of Rifle at 95 degrees, rose 4000' within 9 miles (2000' of that in one 2.5 mile section of road) and dropped to 75 degrees. Once we got up there we saw high mountain meadows, aspen and pine forests, and wild flowers everywhere. Not what I expected. There weren't many people up there and most of the traffic we saw were oil workers using the roads to get to private land on top of the Plateau. We drove along the rim road taking has many of the little overgrown side road that we could. One of these road started to head into a canyon and then deadended. We got out of the car and went for hike which all we had to follow was game trails. We came across some cool waterfalls, forests and some stinging nettle.

 

I took a bunch of pictures so here they are.

 

The Colorado River 3 miles away and 4000' down

 

 

 

The road getting up there.

 

White Columbine

 

our hike and Waterfalls

 

My cave

 

2ft diameter aspen tree. I saw the largest aspen trees I have ever seen on this hike.

 

The hatch, stalking us.

 

cliffs

 

 

Before we got back into rifle there was a atv playground and the hatch was the perfect size so i played around a little. Then I found this.

-Max

Very nice as usual, Maximus.

looks like a lot of fun!!

 

I always get nervous next to drop offs like that, though...

 

 

-Kevin

wonder what the story is on the overturned wagon? nice shots .

That is way cool Max. That cave shot is priceless!:-p

Very nice.

You just saved me from looking at 10 minutes of pron. Thanks Maxie.

 

This is the best pic though.

 

WOW! That's sweet. Could you give me directions to that place? From Rifle that is.

Do you work for National Geographic? Those are very good pics.

 

Jeff

wonder what the story is on the overturned wagon? nice shots .

 

if you go off road alot you find cars like that , ether abanded on purpose or somone broke down and by the time got back the car was vandalized

nice pics. glad to see you kept the round headlights