Most of the way up Green Mountain we hiked. It really didn't take much longer than a few weeks ago when we tried to actually run up the trails. Once atop Green, it was mostly rolling hills for the rest of the day -- even for the folks going to Nederland, which is within a few hundred feet elevation of the summit of Green.
Laurel and I ran with the group until we were near Walker Ranch. At that point we decided it was time to turn back. A few people suggested since we had made it that far, we might as well run through Walker Ranch, over to Eldorado Springs State Park, then head back to Chautauqua on the Mesa trail.
Somehow that sounded like a good idea, even though they told us the loop was 20 miles total. Maybe our logic was: we had already run 8 miles, so we could go 8 miles back the same way (boring), or 12 miles around the long way, which is only 4 miles more, which isn't much. We got directions for a key shortcut and were on our way.
As we were getting to the Eldo connector trail it started to occur to me that we were running out of time, since we had invited friends over for 5pm. Worst case, we figured we could run through the park and call a cab when we got to the main road.
When we got into Eldorado Springs, we decided to check out the Old Mesa trail. It's somewhat complicated to find, as you have to navigate through a neighborhood and go halfway up a private driveway, but we managed. In the end we took that back to the S. Mesa Trailhead, where we discovered that
- you can't order a taxi without providing a numbered street address,
- Boulder's main taxi company doesn't service that area, and
- other taxi companies wouldn't be able to get us for at least an hour.
Despite not taking the Mesa trail back, we still managed to cover 18 miles! Took us about 5:40.
Tim, Jill, Ann, and Sean joined us for pizza -- great end to the weekend!
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