The hike up from the Ranger Station is one of the most popular in Rocky Mountain National Park for good reason.
Only an hour and a half out of Denver the hike can be as easy or as strenuous as you want. It offers great exercise, awe inspiring views, and a very well made trail. Best of all it's free, no entrance fee.
This trail sees probably way over a hundred people per day, no doubt as the season begins in earnest mid July I'd expect numbers to double. The trail in most places is wide enough for two people to pass and it's reinforced with spaced steps. Wilderness hardly, a well maintained National Park trail it is. The trail was built long enough ago, and has been maintained well enough, that lichen and ground cover grows unmolested along the sides.
The trail starts high (9500ft at a guess) and it goes up. Up enough so you get exercise but gradual enough so that if you want to walk slowly you can still move along. The forest is unspectacular lodgepole but at least is shows little sign of cutting. Dead trees are left to rot. Not too much beetle kill. Lodgepole forests hold few animals and a steady stream of humans no doubt keeps what animals there are away. I did see one coyote scat. Sly devil, left his mark.
After a couple miles the trail abruptly emerges from the trees and you are above tree line. That's about where I took the picture above yesterday. I try to get out once a week. Longs is the prominent peak on the far right side.
The trail originates on the east side of the peak but to get to a part of the mountain that can be walked up one has to circle all the way around the North side and across the west side of the summit. All in all it's over 15 miles round trip, with a 4800 foot elevation gain, yet it's very popular with people from Denver as well as all across the great plains. They often start hiking at midnight or earlier.
I was simply interested in stretching my legs. I hiked a ways past the chasm view cut off. I did see one marmot, which is a rodent similar to a rat or a beaver that lives between and under large rocks above tree line. Tibetans are said to relish the meat the way the Lao do bamboo rat or the way we used to eat porcupines. Flavorful, fatty, tender, meat. I digress.
I and a gazillion other people will probably be hiking up this hill again this summer, a fun hike with a lot of exercise close to home.
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