Last Days in Boulder

Jake and I went hiking twice in our final three days in Boulder - once on Wednesday and once on Friday. On Thursday in between I went to see First Blood in the movie theater in Boulder, a one-off showing of the film to promote the dvd release of all four Rambo movies. It was awesome. Anyway, our first hike lasted about three hours and went up on the trails behind NIST that the dog and I usually see on long walks up the hill. Most of the hike followed the Mesa Trail, which is a fairly easy and pleasant walk. I didn't take any pictures because my last set of rechargeable batteries are all but dead and I didn't want to wait for the last two survivors to take a partial charge. Here's an altered version of the official Boulder trail map showing where we went. The thick blue line indicates our route:



On Friday I figured that I should go climb a mountain for once, so we hiked over to Chautauqua Park and thence up to Green Mountain and over to Bear Peak before going back down past NCAR home. In all, the hike lasted about 6.5 hours and I was wiped after it. I made several mistakes that led to such exhaustion: 1) I underestimated the topographical difficulties, 2) I underestimated our water requirements, 3) I overestimated our hiking speed and related to that 4) I underestimated our hunger. If I were to do it again, I'd take another bottle or two of water with me as well as some Clif bars. My camera's lame batteries died on the ascent to Bear Peak, but I managed to get a few pictures here and there out of them by letting them rest, which is why there are fewer of the second half of the hike. Here's the route we took, again highlighted in blue:




And now, for some of the many pictures.

The by-now familiar view of the Flatirons from NIST:


A weird house on the way to Chatauqua:


Jake relaxing in the shade at the entrance to Chautauqua Park:


Jake at the beginning of the trail leading out of Chautauqua toward Gregory Canyon:


The Flatirons from Chautauqua near Baseline Road:


A view back down toward Boulder from the Gregory Canyon trail:


What the trail looks like going up into the mountains:


Baseline and Bear Creek Apartments from the trail:


A small stream across the path before Ranger Trail:


A juncture:


Ranger Trail:


A lodge at the divergence of Ranger and Long Canyon:


Into the woods:


Another fork in the path:


Farther down Ranger Trail:


Jake attacks a patch of snow:


The aftermath:


A squirrel perplexed at our trek:


Pearl Street and northern Boulder:


The interior:


To the top:


Jake looks down on his domain:


From the summit:


Jake puts on his best Dragos face:


Baseline et al. from the top:


Onward:


And downward:


Our next goal:


A chipmunk:


A cool and refreshing-to-Jake stream:


The path along the creek in the canyon:


Back up:


Looking toward South Boulder


Eldora, I believe:


The view, at last, from Bear Peak:


Looking down at El Dorado Canyon and toward Denver, which you can just make out in the distance:


South Boulder:


Green Mountain:


The tip-top of Bear Peak:


Left leads you down a rockfall of slicing and dicing jagged stones and right points off a precipice and down onto more jagged stones; I went left. They really need to work on these trails, as they're easy to lose and damned dangerous:


Hooray, a sign indicating the trail. My camera quit working completely after this picture, so thus ends this post. Oh, I made it back home over an hour after taking this.