Mount Falcon Park

It feels like it's been forever since my last outing. And it feels like that because I didn't really have a weekend last weekend. I had to work all day Saturday and, because of that, I had to do all my chores on Sunday. It wasn't a very fun weekend.

We originally had different plans Saturday but due to several circumstances we didn't do them. There was the Winter Mountain Games going on in Vail that we were really interested in going to. But I was feeling under the weather during the week and wasn't sure if I could go. And then we found out the weather was probably going to be spotty; neither of us are very experienced with snow driving or mountain driving and we really didn't want to start with both happening at the same time. So, last minute plans to go to Mount Falcon! It was closer to home and if we needed to beat the weather, we could. It was a good thing we did that since it started snowing when we were leaving the park.

Mount Falcon is just south of Red Rocks park so it seemed familiar. But the trail we went on was completely different than the one we went on at Red Rocks. The trail we decided to hike went up and around a side of the mountain and was about 5 km long.

The side of the mountain you see is where we hiked

We started going up the trail and the incline wasn't incredibly steep but it was steep enough to have me breathless at some times if I was walking too quickly. The trail also had a different feel as you went along the trail.

The first leg of the trail looked mostly like this.

The view along the trail was pretty great too. I had to make sure to look around me as we were hiking so that I wouldn't miss the scenery. I wanted to make sure I wouldn't fall on my face or off a ledge so I was looking down a lot. Still, make sure you look up to drink up your surroundings.

Even with the zoom maxed out on my camera, the parking lot is still far away

There were snowy parts on the trail!

It was very sunny when we were hiking late morning so there were a lot of people hiking. And people biking... up the mountain... in the snow! More power to them.

Then on our last bit of the trail we saw wild animals! David looked them up and found out they were elk. The first group we saw was passing by across a little valley from us.

One of the three we saw in the first group. They were pretty far apart.

Then we saw another group a lot closer to us. Once we were done taking pictures of the first group, David turned to keep walking, and he started because he saw another elk that was no more than 10 ft away from us.

Surprise!

Then we continued walking we saw that it was with two others.

We were interrupting meal time

It was a pretty awesome way to end a great hike.

For more pictures from the hike: Mt Falcon