On July 6, 2010 I intended to climb South and North Arapaho Peaks, but when I woke up at 4am I found the power was out. I didn't want to abandon Kyoko and Kyle with no power, so I scrapped the hike. This was rather upsetting, since it was a good day and the weather was forecast to be bad the next day. So July 7 I decided to take advantage of a surfeit of energy and cooler weather and clouds to do another local hike, the triple climb of Green Mountain, Bear Peak, and South Boulder Peak. It rained lightly for much of the hike and the weather reminded me of the Pacific Northwest. A nice contrast from the usual hot and sunny conditions here. The only bad thing was that most of the hike was in the low clouds so I had no views. I took pictures during better weather of some of the trails leading up to the mountains, but I'll have to come back for better summit photos someday. Here is the unique summit monument of Green Mountain (8144 feet).
On the way to Bear Peak I ran into a mule deer having breakfast. Kindly he moved aside to let me continue along the trail.
Talus leading toward the Bear Peak summit (8461 feet).
The final class 2 scramble. I came down a slightly different way but it cliffed out so I had to move back to this ridge anyway.
Summit marker and register. I signed and simply said "no views today".
View back down toward the east.
More talus to climb to get to South Boulder Peak (8549 feet).
The summit.
I could barely make out what looked like a good climbing area nearby.
Looking back down. You can see a metal tube for a register here, but it looked rusted shut and indeed I couldn't open it.
Nearing the bottom of Shadow Canyon. A nice thing about this hike was that after the Flagstaff Trail and before the Mesa Trail, the entire main part of the hike, I didn't see another person.
The overgrown sections of the trail were surprisingly annoying. These plants hold a surprising amount of water, so my pants legs would get soaked moving through them. The pants dry reasonably quickly, but still my legs would be wet for a while.
At least I was below the clouds, but the weather wasn't really any better in the plains.
I brought a map but tried to do the hike without it. However once again the Mesa Trail, despite being signed, confused me. I think I went wrong at a sign that said 4.4 miles to Chautauqua, but which didn't say which way to go. It looked like there was only one way (other than going back the way I'd come), and that way seemed wrong, but I figured it would curve back again. There must have been another trail at that junction that I didn't see. Anyway I got to see some nice scenery I would have missed otherwise.
Just like the last time I lost the Mesa Trail, after a while I got far enough from the flatirons (even if you can barely see them here) to realize something had gone wrong. This time I had my map so I pulled it out. Just like last time I found a connecting trail to get back to the Mesa Trail, so that I didn't need to retrace my steps. This time the trail was the Big Bluestem Trail.
Scenery here was much better than the Mesa Trail anyway, which is mostly in the woods with no view.
Heading back toward the Flatirons.
Devil's Thumb, I think.
When I made it back to the Mesa Trail I found a sign that said 4.2 miles to Chautauqua, so I'd taken over 2.2 miles to make 0.2 miles of progress. Later I took this picture of the sign that caused me to lose the Mesa Trail the first time. It's not clear just which 2 of the 3 branches here are the Mesa Trail, so I figured the wide straight trail was the Mesa Trail and the narrow trail some spur, and continued along the wide trail here. But it turns out I needed to go up--the trail to the right was actually the Bear Canyon Trail even though there was no sign anywhere saying that.
The Mesa Trail on the left, with the wider Bear Canyon Trail below. I took that trail by mistake the first time I climbed Green Mountain.
Fortunately I had plenty of time and energy for an extra 2 mile detour, although my penalty for the extra time is that it started to rain again for the last half hour or so of the hike. A pretty mellow hike even though it was 17.25 miles with over 6000 feet climbing. I only drank 100ml of water and ate a bag of senbei/peanuts and a Nerd Rope (candy). The hike took 7:44, similar time to hikes in the Indian Peaks that were less than half the length, but that shows how much harder those hikes were, at higher elevation and involving snow climbing and scrambling. Anyway a great hike--what a pleasure to be able to do it right from the house!
