We've hiked a few truly fun and spectacular trails over the years. Trails that involve crawling, climbing and/or wayfinding with a paper topo map (which you hopefully picked up at the Forest Service Office) before your hike.
You know what I mean: hikes where the journey is as fun as the destination.
Most hikes in Utah come to mind: desert wash, slot canyons, goblins. And then there are those where you get to pretend you are of the ancient people living in cliff dwellings. Trails with route and wayfinding are fun, sometimes intentionally, i.e. look for the next trail marker/post, and sometimes unintentionally, i.e. oh sh!t, when did we walk an extra mile off trail because of the snow?
Undoubtedly, these unique places require a more deliberate effort to find and explore which this makes it all more fun. But when you find something fun and challenging within just a few miles of home...well, that's special, too.
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| Exploring slots at Bighorn Canyon in Grand Staircase - Escalante |
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Spider walking at Hall's Crossing, Lake Powell
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| Climbing to cliffside living quarters at Bandelier National Monument |
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| Squeezing through the narrow crack at Balcony House in Mesa Verde National Park. |
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| Backpacking post to post through the dunes at White Sands National Park. |
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| Searching for water on Calf Creek Plateau in Powderhorn Wilderness, Colorado. |
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| Crossing a late season snowfield in Banff. |
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Golden Gate and Black Bear Trail
We are multi-generational ColoRADans and love this place about as much as anyone can love a place. But the best hiking here is usually for late summer (alpine lakes, deep river valleys, craggy peaks), can be hard to access (long, bumpy and/or muddy four wheel drive roads) and/or is far away (the largest wilderness areas, high plateaus).
On a regular old day sometimes you just need a hike that's ice-free and not too far from home. Golden Gate Canyon State Park has always fit this bill - for exercise and forest bathing but not necessarily for an unusually fun hike. And, to be honest, we've stopped making the trek to this lovely State Park because the roads to get there are circuitous (coming from Evergreen) and it gets a bit crowded.
Enter Black Bear Trail. What fun! The designers of this trail leveled up their usual vista, rock formation and trickling stream or canyon themes. The trail hits all of the vistas, leads through rock gardens where sometimes you’re following markers with no visible foot path, sometimes you are scrambling up rocks and sometimes you are traversing a ridge of rock crevices. It is challenging up and down, long enough for a proper workout (coupled with Horseshoe Trail) and hits all of the best parts of Colorado foothills hiking including trickling streams, valley views, history, aspen groves and glimpses of Mount Blue Sky and surrounding peaks.
I tackled the trail one sunny Monday in early April during an exceptionally dry winter so no snow or ice and the teeny drainage along Horsehoe trail was just a trickle. From Blue Grouse Trailhead, I took the loop clockwise leaving much of the elevation gain for the second half, on the sunny South-facing side. In short, it may be a very hot uphill hike in the summer going clockwise. It also may be quite crowded on a nice weekend.
From the Black Bear or Horseshoe trailheads the loop is about 5 miles with 1,300 feet of elevation gain. Check out this amazing GIS tool from the Colorado Parks & Wildlife for more information on Black Bear Trail and more.
