Weekend Hiking

Bear with me, because this is going to be a longish post. But there are pictures! So that makes it quicker, right?

Saturday we went on probably the most beautiful hike I’ve ever done. Hanging Lake is located near Glenwood Canyon about an hour west of Vail. The canyon itself is absolutely breathtaking. The fierce Colorado river runs through cliff walls of variegated red stone that go straight up. This year we have had tons of rain and quite a bit of run-off and the river was crazy high and had some amazing rapids.

To get to the trail head you have to get off the highway and then go back the opposite direction (East) and get off again. The trailhead has very nice facilities including water and bathrooms and vending machines and a big parking lot. The trail itself starts out flat, wide and paved. It’s pretty deceiving.

I wouldn’t really call the trail hard, but a lot of it is pretty rocky and some of it is pretty steep. Sometimes simultaneously. There is one section near the top where you are scrambling for sure if you’re short. The Boy Scouts added some awesome handrails in this section, bless ’em or I would have been insanely nervous about Matt taking Ben over it in the pack not to mention Tabby hiking it on her own.

The other hardish thing about this trail was that the interwebs and the sign at the bottom of the trail pegged it between 2 and 3 miles round-trip. My Garmin had us at 5 miles. Now that includes quite a bit of screwing around at the top and general back-tracking, but I still maintain it was more of a 4-mile round-trip. Obviously not too bad, but when you’re expecting about half of that, it was kind of a surprise.

Still, we all did quite well and didn’t run out of water or anything like that. I was pitying the folks we saw on the way back who were walking in the heat of the day with a 20 oz bottle of water for two people and flip-flops. Oy.

But the trail itself is incredibly beautiful. You’re alongside the river almost always and there’s tons of trees and so it’s pretty cool and shady. There are waterfalls every quarter mile and beautiful cascades. We saw tons of critters including some very bold chipmunks, a cute marmot and snails!

We crossed at least 5 bridges, not including the walkway at the lake and there was a really neat little log shelter about halfway up. We also noticed some little cave vents along the way that the nicest cool air blew from. They were very very welcome.

After two miles of hiking, all of which Tabby did on her own I might add, including the aforementioned difficult bits, we arrived at Hanging Lake. It’s an interesting and quite apropos name. It is a beautiful lake, fed by three waterfalls. The water is amazingly clear (so clear you can CLEARLY see fish from above) and that gorgeous glacial blue color. It basically rests on the side of a cliff, kind of like an infinity swimming pool … lake … drop-off. So the outer edge has a really nice walking platform all along it. There’s also a huge log that extends half of the lake that you can walk out onto. Beautiful.

We got to rest here and take in the scenery and have a snack. After we had our fill of the lake (though I swear I could have stayed for hours), we backtracked slightly and hiked to spouting rock, a gorgeous waterfall just above Hanging Lake. It is super cool in that you can actually walk behind the waterfall in a small cave and come almost right up to the waterfall.

Ben was absolutely in his element. He looked at the waterfall and said, “WOA!” And he loved running up to it and throwing his arms up and feeling the spray. He had a blast running through the little puddles behind the falls and generally getting down and dirty in nature. He was not keen to get back in the backpack.

The hike back was mostly easier, but some of the steep parts were tricky. Tabby was exhausted and Aunt Gaga gave her piggy-back rides here and there to ease her descent. By the time we were done there was no waiting to get back to the condo to have a bite to eat. So we found a Mexican restaurant in Glenwood and had a much-needed nosh.

When we returned to the condo (near 5PM) everyone went down for naps. Ben, however, went down for the night and we didn’t hear from him until 3 in the morning when he needed a bottle. The rest of us rallied but couldn’t be bothered to do much besides watch movies. The mark of a very good hike.