Springtime Hiking

Lately I've been kind of quiet here on SPL about my hiking day trips. Mostly, I felt like the weekend recap posts were getting kind of monotonous. But I've not stopped my Sunday forays into the foothills and mountains of Colorado.

In the last month or so, I've hiked on the Chasm Lake trail in RMNP; the Nighthawk and Button Rock trails in Lyons; to Estes Cone in RMNP; and the Beaver Brook/Gudy Gaskill trails in Golden.



Of these trails, only Estes Cone and Beaver Brook were entirely new to me. The latter, hiked last Sunday, was an especially nice trail, I think. And there's nothing quite like the smell of dirt and pine needles warming in the sun of a perfect Spring morning. On the other trails, I was able to explore sections I hadn't reached before.

Incidentally, I think getting to the trailhead for the Beaver Brook hike was the first time I've driven a vehicle on Lookout Mountain Road. It was kind of a strange experience and really made me miss my road bike.

And I've been working on getting used to my new camera. While I'm not yet the photographer I would like to be, I think the quality of my pictures is generally improving. Some of the shots above (the self-portraits and panoramas) were taken with my phone, but the others were with a Canon 60d. I feel like I need to start hitting the trail a little earlier to get better light, and my post-processing skills could definitely use some work.

There are plenty of cool things to do around here that can be accomplished in a single day. But it's hard to keep my mind off of the bigger adventures that I'm planning for the summer. All in all, I've got a lot of things to keep my enthusiasm high. I just wish there were more time to do all the things I love doing.