Category: Hiking

Camping

The last two weekends I went camping. It turns out when I’m hanging out with other people I don’t take nearly as many pictures (when I even remember my camera). I ended up with no pictures from camping in the Crags (north-west side of Pike’s Peak), though I did have the excuse that my car died on the way there so I missed the group hike to where the view was.

The next weekend I went camping with a couple friends on national forest land near Tarryall. As you can see, it’s quite distant from Pike’s Peak:
Pike's Peak

Here’s the view of the campsite from the top of the rock ridge behind it (I never did take a picture looking at it, just looking down from it):
Campsite

My tent is the green one under a tree to the far left of the picture, and the red Subaru Outback is the new-ish car that replaced the car that died on the way to the Crags. That actually worked out rather well for this campout because the last bit of road isn’t really maintained and I very much used both the all-wheel-drive (in the mud pit after it rained) and ground clearance (uneven rocky road) of my Subaru.

The spot where I really wish I’d had my camera with me was when we went mountain biking up one of the other roads to some old cabins (ranging from a log cabin built into the side of the hill to a structure that used milled lumber and concrete). That was my first time mountain biking: now I’m occasionally browsing craigslist looking for a good deal on a mountain bike.

The family that was hosting the campout (they brought their camper and toys and did most of the cooking) had a hummingbird feeder set up. I was rather impressed by the amount of traffic it got, though none of my attempts at getting a picture of a hummingbird actually came out. The hummingbirds weren’t overly willing to share, so all weekend we got to listen to their little trills of aggression as they chased each other away from the feeder.

Since I hadn’t been in a couple weeks (due to camping/no car) I did the incline way to early this morning. Here’s the sun rising through they haze of smoke from distant wildfires:
Sunrise

It was cold and tiring, but despite not really eating breakfast beforehand (a fruit cup and a granola bar on the way there) I beat my previous best time up. Here’s a ground squirrel that agreed with me that it was chilly (it was shivering):
Squirrel

Mt Manitou

I finally hiked to the top of Mt Manitou this weekend:
Summit Log Jars

Those are the jars that hold the visitor log for the summit. Based on the frequency of entries (the older, almost full notepad went all the way back to 2007) I was probably the only person to make that hike this weekend.

Of course, if it were a more frequently visited mountain there might actually be a trail. As it is you take Barr trail to the fork with the sign for the experimental forest, then take the road that goes by there until it meets another road. Take a right uphill, then as the road starts leveling out look for an easy slope on your left and just go uphill from there. Eventually you get to the top (which is covered in trees so there’s not a good panoramic view), but just downhill to the east there’s a big rock that you can get up on for a view of the springs:
colorado springs

The biggest surprise in terms of animals seen was a deer:
deer
She was between the tent set up by the creek and the group of campers up the trail at the experimental forest station (they had a fire going on one of the old concrete foundations). She watched (and listened to) me from a distance as I went by on the road.

There were lots of flowers in bloom, and I took enough pictures a couple actually turned out nicely:
5 petal purple flowers

Bell-shaped purple flowers

Blodgett Peak

This afternoon I hiked up Blodgett Peak. More accurately: today I got lost on a mountain but eventually made it to the top of Blodgett Peak.

The directions I had described how to get to the parking lot, what forks to take after leaving the road up the water tower, but ended with: “The trail gets faint and hard to follow. Proceed to the peak on one of the informal trails.” I should have recognized that as being a bad sign. Trails here tend to be granite gravel where the plants are worn away. Drainage washes also tend to be granite gravel with no plants. The map shows the trail loosely following a stream and approaching the peak from the north side. I followed a trail that split away from the stream (it had a couple switchbacks and couldn’t have fully been formed by washing out) until it entered a boulder field, at which point I lost it and just started climbing the 45 degree slope of the boulders. I ended up approaching the peak from the east having climbed up the south side of the ridge. The best part was that occasionally I’d see little cairns (intentionally placed piles of rock for markers) indicating that someone thought my route was a valid path (note the slope of the ground behind that pile of rocks):
cairn

Thankfully that route only required a lot of scrambling over rocks and no actually rock climbing to get to the top, though I think I would have gone much faster on a proper trail. On the other hand, I got some good views that weren’t as visible from the top, like this picture of the quarry a little south of Blodgett (also note the burned spots from the Waldo Canyon Fire):
quarry

The view from the top was rather impressive for only ~2500 feet of elevation gain from the trailhead:

On the way back down I actually found a well defined trail (at least until it got to where it blended in with the generally washed out terrain thanks to the burn scar). Where the trees were all burned and dead the underbrush tended to be doing rather well.
Burned Log

There was also plenty of wildlife to be seen. The magpies flew away before I got a good picture and the tiny birds living in the rocks of the boulder field were similarly camera shy, but I did catch some of the critters:


I saw a deer too, but that was in my rearview mirror in town while driving home. It made it across the street without getting hit.

I also decided it was worth standing in the middle of the stream (it was very shallow and my new boots are waterproof) to get this picture of the waterfalls:
waterfall

As much as I’m sure it’s bloating the storage required for my blog I’m not regretting buying a new camera at all.