Skunk Canyon to Royal Arch hike

Nice warm sunny day today! We rode bikes to Chautauqua and hiked to Skunk Canyon. The bottom of the canyon was still a bit snowy and we just had sneakers so we didn't want to go too far up -- plus there was a raptor closure farther west. A faint trail going steeply up the north side of the canyon took us up to some unknown Flatirons (we heard people climbing) and then up to a ridge. From the ridge we saw swarms of people around the Royal Arch to the North. We bushwhacked a few hundred meters across the valley to the bottom of the Royal Arch rock. That wasn't too tough, but once we were around the north side of the arch the terrain was steep and snowy. Finally made the trail and hiked it to the arch. About 5 miles round trip and 1400' gain in 3 hours.

Chasm Lake

For various reasons, Laurel and I have failed multiple times to hike to Chasm Lake:

• 2/7/2009: late start, bad weather
• 4/10/2010: sketchy snow conditions
• 7/26/2011: slippery trail, no traction, time constraints

She was pretty beat from our Gibraltar Lake mega-hike yesterday, so I went hiking with JJ. We got to the Chasm Lake overlook and stopped for a bite, then continued towards the lake. The trail was in great shape with little to no snow. The last section before the lake had some fun scrambling opportunities. We hung out at the lake for a bit, took some pictures, and retraced our steps. Round trip was 8.5 miles and just over 6 hours.

Chasm Lake

The 2000' face of the Diamond

JJ was pretty excited about seeing snow in September

Clouds rolling in on our descent

Gibraltar Lake

At the west end of the Camp Dick / Peaceful Valley campground, the Middle Saint Vrain Road turns to 4WD. We hoped to drive 4 miles to its end and start our hike towards Gibraltar Lake from there. Unfortunately, the entry to the 4WD part of the road was more than we were prepared for. We watched a couple of guys arrange rocks so their truck wouldn't bottom out. It looked treacherous so we decided to hike in from there. For the most part, the road wasn't too bad but there were a few dicey 4WD areas and some muddy flooding. The guys driving it weren't going much faster than we were on foot.

After 4 miles on the road we began the hike we intended to do. Blue sky day, Aspens turning yellow, lots of walking. We took the Buchanan Pass trail to the St. Vrain Glacier trail to a point where it wasn't clear where the trail continued on. It probably crossed the creek but there were some cairns on our side of the creek that led into a talus field.

The talus was rough going. We took a break for lunch on a bit of a plateau, then decided to head south and down off the talus, into the valley, to try to find the trail. Soon enough we hooked up with it, crossed the creek one or two times, and made it to a lake. Whether that was Gibraltar Lake or not, we're not sure -- some of the terrain didn't look as expected based on our map, so we may have been at one of the other nearby lakes.

The Elk Tooth was to our north. Its steep sides are loose and crumbly but it looked like the ridge could be a good scramble someday.

After a short while at the lake we turned and tried to take the correct trail back. It stayed on the south side of the creek for a while and then we lost it somehow. A bit of off-trail hiking, a bit of figuring out where to cross the creek safely, and we were back on trail, avoiding the nasty talus. It was a long day in the woods -- 16 miles total in 8 hours.

Mount Neva

Laurel and I wanted to do some kind of mountain run... we got that and more! We were considering South Arapaho but since we had hiked it before and there were other trails in that area to explore, we thought they could be fun. Before we left I discovered there was a 4th class scramble up Mount Neva's north ridge -- that became our objective.

From the 4th of July trailhead we ran up to Arapaho Pass, took a look at Lake Dorothy, then headed off trail to Neva's north ridge. From there the scrambling began -- mostly easy but a few tricky spots where you really needed some rock climbing moves. There were a few downclimbs along the way...

... and some fun places to horse around like the diving-board rock.

We got to a point where it seemed forward progress was blocked. To the left was a sheer vertical face. Ahead was chunkier but it seemed like it would get steeper the higher you'd go, plus it seemed like if we got to the top we'd have to then descend the other side. To the right were a few pillars and even further right was a drop-off. It seemed like we would be able to follow a ramp up and left for a ways, then cut right to go around or behind the pillar to a weakness in the rock that we hoped would take us to more passable terrain.

For the most part our plan worked. On the other side of this hump of rock there was a gentle rock gully. Just a few sketchy traverse moves and we were at the bottom of the gully, which took us up to the ridgeline. From there we could see the way to the summit.

The ridge continued a bit to a large flat rocky place. The sky was a bit hazy but to the southwest we could vaguely see the Winter Park basin and even see some of the ski slopes. To the northeast along the divide was Navaho and Apache, with Dickers Peck in between.

From the flat area we hiked up a gentle alpine slope to the summit of Neva, stopped for food and photos, then continued south to the saddle between Neva and Jasper Peak (which would have been a fun continuation if we had the time). From the saddle we headed east down a scree slope towards a few unnamed lakes.

The scree turned to larger talus with some intriguing colors, textures, and shapes -- white, black, pink, swirled, speckled.

After the talus field we came to a meadow that was swampish in some areas but we tried to find the high ground back to the trail. This took surprisingly longer than expected even though for the most part we avoided the willows. Finally we traversed and hiked up a steep bank to the trail.

The clouds were getting dark but we were OK for the run back down the trail to our car, and only arrived 10-15 minutes later than expected.

In the parking lot we met a girl named Yulia who had flown in from New York for the weekend to hike and camp up at Lake Dorothy. She had taken a bus from the airport to Nederland on Friday, then walked 8 or 9 miles to the trailhead to start her hike!! We gave her a ride back to Boulder so she could catch the red eye and be back at work the next day.

And then we got home in time for Donna and JJ to come over for the football game.

Bear Peak

On Labor Day we hiked up Bear Peak with Pete and Heather and her dog Bailey. It was a fun day out (and not too much music teacher talk :)

This is the first time we'd been up on Bear since the fire earlier this year -- from the summit you could see how badly South Boulder Peak got burned.

Colorado Mines Peak, Mount Flora

We drove over to Berthoud Pass to attempt to run and hike up Colorado Mines Peak and see which other peaks we could bag.

Colorado Mines Peak was a relatively short and easy hike. The summit has a bunch of radio towers and FAA radar equipment -- not the type of stuff we usually find on summits!

We descended from the peak a bit then continued on for an hour to Flora, whose summit was large, flat, and rocky. From there we had good views of Ethel Lake and the terrain ahead.

The north ridge of Flora descends gradually then turns NE and steep! We followed this route to the saddle between Flora and Witter, where the earth smelled of sulfur and a small snowfield was melting away.

The clouds were coming in so we decided to turn back, back up steep slopes nearly all the way back to Flora's summit. This was my first outing at any significant altitude in a few months and I was noticing it!

Beautiful Autumn colors in the alpine terrain

Pika!

Great singletrack running

US-40 winding towards Winter Park

Clouds really coming in now

By the end of the day we had covered 9 miles and 2500' vertical in about 3h50m, and didn't feel any rain until the moment we stepped foot in the parking lot!

USA Pro Challenge

The USA Pro Challenge is a multi-day cycling race in Colorado, covering nearly 700 miles and 42,000 vertical feet. We caught the second-to-last stage, which started in Golden, rode through Boulder, then up to Nederland and Lyons before finishing back in Boulder on Flagstaff Mountain.

Donna and Rachel joined us to ride downtown. Lots of people out on bikes, Pearl St. was closed off for blocks for a cycling expo -- it was a zoo!

We all watched and cheered as the riders zoomed down Spruce St. (There were as many support vehicles, cop cars and motorcycles as there were cyclists!) Then Laurel and I headed up to Chautauqua for a hike. We hiked up and over the First Flatiron to the Gregory trailhead and then headed up Flagstaff Rd a bit to watch the end of the race. There were a LOT of people, probably 10s of thousands of people on Flagstaff, some in costumes, lots of cowbells.

Scrambling around Seal Rock

We were going to hike up Fern Canyon to Bear Peak but got sidetracked by hiking up to the Harmon Cave area and exploring a bit. There were some climbers starting up Seal Rock. We headed off to the right to see what we could find -- perhaps a way up to the Fern Canyon trail.

Seal Rock's north face

We hiked to the south end of Poot Ridge (or Gnome Rock?) and scrambled up for a view before continuing up and southward.

The west side of Seal Rock was impressive. We continued past and ended up stuck somewhere around the East Ridge of the Nebel Horn. There may have been a way around but we were running out of time so we turned around and headed back.

west side of Seal Rock

Dinosaur Mountain

Laurel and I parked at NCAR and started towards the Mallory Cave trail, as we did 10 days ago. At that time the goal was to reach the Square and Babyhorn rocks -- an easy 2-mile round trip; today we continued past our previous turn around point up the steepening trail. Following the guidance of Gerry Roach's Flatirons Classics, our objective was to worm our way through the tiers of rock scattered on Dinosaur Mountain to its summit.

Not far into the hike a huge snake crossed the path between us. Either I unknowingly stepped right over it or it hadn't yet entered the path when I crossed. Laurel cried "S-S-S-NAKE!!!" and made a mighty leap back 20' off the trail. We let it slither through the grass before continuing on.

Shortly after hiking around behind Der Zerkle we left the main Mallory Cave trail and started up the even steeper climbers' access trail. It brought us to a junction where the trail broke left and right. We arbitrarily chose the right branch which led under the summit of another rock. The trail faded but there looked to be good scrambling around the northeast side of this rock.

We found an exposed traverse to the east face of the rock and attained a sub-summit perhaps 20' below the true summit. Those last 20' looked like a bad idea in sneakers with no rope so we were content to look out over Boulder from this perch.

summit of The Box

From the pictures and description in the Roach book we discovered we were sitting on a rock called The Box. To the west were Fi, Fo, Fum, and Dum, forming the third tier of north-south ridges of rock. Knowing our exact position helped, since the book described a scramble over the third tier just west of The Box.

Fi and Fo

Fum

Before attempting that scramble, however, we checked out the west-side sub-summit of The Box, where I knocked my noggin pretty hard on an overhanging rock blocked by my hat's visor. The scramble up this hunk of rock was described as class 3. Perhaps if I had rock shoes on I could agree with that assessment!

The scramble through the third tier was straightforward; it brought us to a steep hunk of rock that we suspected was the summit we were looking for, but we decided to explore around its backside to be sure. Around back we discovered it wasn't the summit; we also found a neat tabletop rock perched on two others, forming a tunnel. Then through the tunnel...

Dum's tunnel

... and atop the rock, which was a gigantic surface, perfect for laying in the sun. This rock was the summit block of Dum. Lunch.

Dinosaur Mountain's summit was just another few hundred feet west, and a pretty simple scramble. From the ground we couldn't tell which rock was the actual summit. Laurel found it first while I scrambled up a northern sub-summit.

Double-exposure of Laurel summiting Dinosaur Mountain

Dan summiting Dino Mtn

Incredible exposure to the west -- the summit looked down into the huge bowl below South Green Mountain that drains into Skunk Canyon.

After a short break in the shade we hiked down the Bowling Alley to a break in Dinosaur Mountain's summit ridge. Scrambling down the west side of the ridge brought us to a steep meadow that we followed all the way down to the Bear Creek trail. Along the way we found a few antlers and a praying mantis crawled around Laurel's pants.

We got back to NCAR 4.5 hours later, completing our 4.7 mile hike. Elevation gain was around 1700'.