Nick's Hikes: July 2011

Waldo Canyon Loop was a fun hike to go on. Its shape is similar to a lollipop. There's a trail (the stick) that leads to a loop (lollipop).

View Waldo Canyon in a larger map

To get to the trail head, drive north on Highway 24 from Colorado Springs toward Woodland Park. Shortly after you pass Manitou Springs, there's a parking area on the right hand side of the road. On the south end of this parking area is the trailhead.

You start out by climbing a bunch of stairs to get on top of the ridge. After that, you'll hike a ways along that ridge, gaining altitude, before the trail makes a hard turn inland. From there, it's mostly downhill till you reach the loop. At the fork, there's a nice bench made by a local Boy Scout Troop where you can sit a while to catch your breath. There's also a creek here as well (when we hiked this in April, the creek was mostly dry).

You are free to go left or right at the fork, since both directions will take you to the same spot, that is, right where you started. :) Rachel and I went left. We figured by doing so we'd get the 'hard' part out of the way first. For the next 30-60 minutes, we were climbing mostly uphill. It was a beautiful trail with big pine trees, cool rock formations, birds chirping overhead, and squirrels scampering across the ground. If the creek had water flowing through it, we might have gotten our feet wet since we crossed it several times.

The trail doesn't make it quite to the top of the ridge, but after turning south, we hiked along the side of it. The views along this section of the trail were nothing short of spectacular. Pikes Peak can be clearly seen from sections of this trail, and the beauty of it simply took my breath away.

Going this direction, the latter half of the loop was fairly exposed, so we got quite a bit of sun and wished we had put sunscreen on. We saw some great views of the plains extending beyond the base of the mountains, and could clearly make out the buildings of downtown Colorado Springs. I guess that whichever direction you take, the latter part of it will be downhill, which we were grateful for. We made it back to the starting point, took another rest on the bench, then headed back to our car.

We found the 'stick' part of the trail to be very busy. We only saw one other person on the 'lollipop' section, and he had walked it in the opposite direction. All in all, it took us about three hours to hike the entire thing. The trail is advertised to be about 6.5 miles (1.5 miles to the loop, 3.5 around the loop), but my GPS tracker said we went almost 9 miles (~2.5 to the loop, ~3.5 around the loop). My guess is that since GPS devices aren't very good with changes in altitude, it miscalculated the distance somehow.

Overall, we really enjoyed the hike and will likely visit again. It would be interesting to see it during a different season and to walk the loop heading the other direction.

http://www.localhikes.com/Hikes/WaldoCanyonLoop_1720.asp

Nick's Hikes

Wednesday, July 6, 2011

The Crags

Devil's Playground (almost)

Blodgett Peak (almost)

Red Rocks Open Space

Waldo Canyon Loop