We've driven up to this spot before, but this time, we were looking for a small
hike to get our week going.
So, we hiked about a mile and a half in, to a little waterfall area, starting
here.
It's kind of neat how you can see Lower Cascade Falls (where we went
yesterday) across the canyon on the other side of town.
In the far, lower right of this one, you can see the Best Western (HQ for FJ
Summit)
From where we parked (and from along the trail), we could see nice views of some
of the other places we've been in the past.
The leftmost third of this one shows a grassy-knoll overlook that we hiked up to
for the first time in July of 2010.
From there, we could see everything from the far reaches of the valley to the
north, to downtown, to the summit of Imogene Pass.
Here's a link to my page about that hike.
starting out...
Here's a view of HQ from just a little ways up the trail
looking up the canyon where Camp Bird road leads to Yankee Boy Basin, Imogene
Pass, etc
nice hide-out across the valley
Next time, we'll probably hike up to Twin Peaks, but this time was just for a
short stroll in the woods.
From this vantage point, we could see both Lower Cascade Falls where we went
yesterday,
as well as Upper Cascade Falls (and the Chief Ouray Mine area) where we've hiked
to many times in years past.
This is the first little waterfall that we came to; basically this is where we
turned back around.
Besides the series of small waterfalls, this stream blocked the trail.
Normally, if we were dedicated to 'getting there' (wherever that would be), we'd
just walk across the creek and keep going,
but in this case, we were just trying to get out for a while and start getting
acclimated to the higher altitude a bit before the higher, longer hikes.
Here's a video of the falls and
rapids, etc where we turned around...
Nice view of the 'Amphitheater' overlooking Summit HQ
looks sort of odd before the FJs
start rolling into town...
After this little hike, we went to the area around Red Mountain Pass for some
trail time, etc.
See that on the next
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