Horsetooth Mountain Park

I went for a little hike this weekend. I was planning on doing Red Mountain but we decided that it wouldn't be a great place (plains, very open, few trees) when the 30-40 mph winds arrived. I thought that sticking close to home and finishing quickly seemed like the better option. So we ended up at Horsetooth. We parked at the Soderberg Trailhead. We would have done a longer hike had a storm not been blowing in. Saturday it was 80 degrees (albeit windy) and beautiful. I had committed to tennis already so that left Sunday for a hike. I woke up to it being 52 degrees. The temperature took a nose dive quickly thereafter. The wind and clouds came. The picture below was taken as the bad weather was rolling in. Luckily we got our hike in before the rain came. It turned out to be an okay day for hiking. Some little yellow flowers were just starting to peek out behind the rocks! I'm ready for spring/summer! Lots of bikers and runners were out trying to get their exercise done before the weather turned. There was a ton of smoke from the Crystal Fire blowing down the canyon by the time we finished. We made it back to the car w/ 10 minutes to spare before it started to spit rain and we were safely locked away inside the house by the time it turned to snow. I did do a new route today so that was fun. It started out along the reservoir then crawled up into the hills and back down.

Hopefully I will have my new camera soon and start capturing better pictures. I'm very anxious to get it!

Horsetooth Mountain Park
Trails Used: Swan Johnson, Shoreline, Sawmill, Stout, to Towers, and back on Swan Johnson
Distance: 5.2 Miles (GPS crapped out a couple of times, so this is an estimation)
Difficulty: Moderate
Moving average: 3.5 mph
Overall average: 3.3 mph
Moving Time: 1 hrs, 17 min
Stopped Time: 4 min, 47 sec
Total Ascent: 861 ft.
Maximum elevation: 6126 ft.