Hitting the trails

All week long Irv and I have been planning a hike up the Manitou Springs Incline.  We got up early this morning and made the drive to Manitou Springs only to be surrounded by hundreds of people and not a parking space to be found within three miles of the Incline.  Now, I'm not a wimp, but I'm not going to hike three miles and then attempt the one-mile Incline which goes straight up the side of a mountain.

We quickly made a Plan B--North Cheyenne Canyon Park which offers many hiking trails. 

We started at Helen Hunt Falls.

This is a nice trail, only about 1/3rd of a mile and 200 foot climb in elevation.







Of course no hike would be complete without an attempt at some "artsy" photos.  This rock wall is one of my favorites.











These stone steps came out pretty good too.











































This is my favorite hiking buddy.









At the top of the Falls we found some people who were willing to take a picture of us together.

Then we drove further up the canyon to the point where the pavement ends.  We hiked up the old Gold Camp Road for a while, but it was kind of boring so we decided to head over to another trail.

Helen Hunt Falls from the Lower Gold Camp Rd.














Lower Gold Camp Road


























Our final hike was on the Mt. Cutler trail which was about a mile in length with a 500 foot elevation gain. 












We saw this really cool rock formation which looked a lot like a totem pole.












Irv took this shot of a Russian Thistle.  Good job, darlin!

 
One part of the trail required climbing over huge rocks with a sheer cliff on the other side.  It was quite scary, but we survived.











About 11:00 we noticed storm clouds moving in.  We made it to the top of mountain, sat down, enjoyed an apple while taking in the views, then made a beeline back to the car.  One place we don't want to be during a storm is up high on a mountain trail.





It was a super fun day with my sweetheart!

Okay, Dana, I've officially started my training for Mt. Kilimanjaro.  I think we should aim for 2015.















Comments

polcat24 said…
What she failed to mention, is that the incline had soooo many people because they were having the Barr trail run that day. Barr trail starts at the base of the incline so it was packed with people. The town was making tons of money from all the tickets they were issuing for illegal parking!!
July 14, 2013 at 4:44 PM
Yogi♪♪♪ said…
It looks like your plan B worked out fairly well. Nice shots.
July 14, 2013 at 8:52 PM
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