Pikes Peak

As we were winding our way along the road we came across an unexpected National Park for a petrified redwood forest. A volcano send down 2 massive lahars (mud flows) that covered some ancient redwoods. The 15ft or so of tree bases slowly petrified by absorbing minerals, and when they excavated the stumps they found solid rock. Pretty impressive sight.

After being v excited to see our first herd of elk, we camped in the lovely Mueller State Park. In the morning we scrambled to find a campsite for the following night on our way to an 2-day attempt on Pikes Peak. It might only be #31 of the 53 14ers (14,000 footers) in Colorado, but it has one of the biggest altitude changes and we didn't know quite what to expect. We grabbed the last stop in the car park and set off up the Barr Trail. It was a pretty relentless up for most of the 3,800 feet up over 6.5 miles but we made it to our overnight stop at Barr Camp nice and early. We grabbed a private mezzanine bed in the main cabin, and whiled away a few hours (re-)learning card games. About half 3 it all went dark then started 'grappling', which I assume is the verb of a new word we learnt for hard hail-like snow.

Despite some people setting off at 5am, we were the last ones up, and after a hearty mountain pancakes breakfast then set off about 7:15 up the remaining 3,900 feet to go. It was a beautiful trail climbing up out of the valley, then through the forest, then up to the rocky summit. The patches of snow made a mistake e change from the 40+C (100+F) of the past many weeks. There were marmots popping up onto the rocks and whistling each other, and one particularly cheeky one posed for some great snaps. Despite the altitude we charged up for the 14,115 ft summit in time for some late morning freshly cooked donuts! At least there are benefits to a road and the cog railway for getting people to the top.

As you would expect down was pretty easy going (relatively speaking!) and we swung by the camp to pick up our big rucksack and then down the full 7,700 foot back to van late afternoon. 18 miles and 10,000 elevation change is a heck of a lot, and Jo's feet were in pretty bad shape once the boots came off.

Fortunately it wasn't far to the camp site but we were shocked that a commercial RV site doesn't have a loo block, let alone a showers. Thankfully the camp hosts were really nice and let us borrow theirs in their full size RV trailer - nice to see how the other half lives with about the same floor span as our UK home!

The next night we ended up parked just off the road in a National Forest, as the official camp sites are full but you can camp anywhere you like unless told otherwise and we found a beautiful spot near a strong stream that cannot have contained any fish (or I really need a fishing lesson!). We had a lazy morning driving over some stupendous 11k ft mountain passes and browsing little alpine towns before ending up in Golden Gate Canyon SP, just outside Denver.Les mer