Colorado Trip - Report 2 - some old favorites

None of the people I was going to meet up with this week are free tonight so I'm going to pass out in a few minutes. Before that, I hiked two old favorite local to Denver mountains today. Mount Morrison is just above quite possibly the greatest place on earth, Red Rocks. The first link is the best description of the trail I can find online, although the barbed wire fence isn't there anymore. This was a tough one hour climb, with more scrambling on rocks than I am comfortable with. But oh well, it was easier for me physically than it was on Thanksgiving Day 2005 when I climbed it last. Yeah, running a lot in the Old Dominioven helps with conditioning.

The way down, let's say I continued my tradition of losing the path, and having to slide down half the mountain on my butt to avoid stumbling, or worse, kicking over rocks that will fall a lot. Fortunately this is the only trail where I was always lose the path. I snapped a few photos that will come soon to a Flickr site near you. Including one of me snapped by a young lady who moved to Colorado from New Jersey and never wants to go back. Heck, can I move back to Colorado?

The second hike of the day was a five minute drive south of Red Rocks at Mount Falcon Open Space Park. I went up and down the Castle Trail with a side trip to the Walker ruins, which was intended to be a Summer White House. Good, quick hike that took just over two hours if you take away the lunch time, 5.6 miles in all.

I must go pass out now at 8:30 after a short swim in the hotel pool if I want to get up early enough to attempt a 14er, Mount Bierstadt. If I don't get up early enough, there are oh about 150,000 other trails I can hike. As long as I keep with the plan to go higher in altitude with each day, and I'm back in town by 4 pm to meet up with friends. It all depends on when I wake up, I'm doing my best to go with the flow and not over-plan and force myself to adhere to an exact schedule like living in DC forces you to over half the time.