This is the first mile marker that I saw on this hike. These posts have been my constant companions throughout the hikes from the confluence of Cherry Creek and the South Platte River. At this point I have hiked 33.5 miles along Cherry Creek and I am nearing the end of the journey.
I began this segment where I left off the last. I went as far as I could on trains and buses and had to take a Lyft taxi from downtown Parker to the Pinery Park and Ride. From there, I hiked down to the Cherry Creek Trail .
I was in for some big changes on this long section of the trail. On earlier hikes, I was walking between major bus stops. Pinery Park and Ride was the last RTD public transportation stop for me.
The creek was mostly a meandering stream with some stretches with high banks and some areas where it became braided with multiple branches spreading out and coming back together. That usually happens when the gradient is shallow and there is little to keep banks from eroding.
There was little of braided sections from here on up. I could feel the slope increasing as the terrain became hillier.
To this point, the valley walls have been like a wide bowl. Starting at I25, there's been a gentle slope down to the creek and the same on the other side of Cherry Creek. Here, the edges of the valley are high bluffs. Steeper gradients give the runoff more power to carve the landscape.
Most of the bedrock here is the same unconsolidated stuff that fills the Denver Basin, but Palmer Divide is special. It's capped by a hard layer of rock that prevents erosion in areas. The result is mesalands.
36.7 million years ago (by radiometric dating) a mountain near present day Buena Vista, Colorado blew it's top in an eruption that absolutely dwarfs anything in human history. It produced pyroclastic flows that spread as far as 65 miles to the east where present day Castle Rock is situated. It covered that distance in less than two hours. The hot cloud of volcanic ash settled and welded together to form the Wall Mountain tuff. The erosion resistant cap that covers Palmer Divide is composed of the tuff and Castle Rock conglomerate that contains big chunks of this tuff mixed with other odds and ends, one being a blue quartzite (boulders up to six feet in diameter) which has a source 46 miles away near present day Boulder near Eldorado Canyon.
The Castle Rock conglomerate was deposited somewhere between 33.9 and 36.7 million years ago in a massive flood (or floods) or rivers that flowed from the northwest. It's been calculated that, for a flood to have moved such boulders so far, the stream velocities had to have been more than 27 miles per hour. No boulders this size moved by any modern Colorado River has been found more than three miles away from the mountains. Even the Big Thomson flood could not compare.
Big events in the past created this arm of hills jutting out from the Rockies into the plains.
Hidden Mesa is part of this hilly landscape rising 600 feet from the valley floor. If I were not trying to reach the canyon on this hike, I could have taken a trail to the top where a couple of hikers assured me there were great views of the surrounding land. The park also boasts of an experimental orchard and vegetable farm.
Instead, I walked into Franktown and ate at Adriana's Mexican restaurant, a friendly place with good food. I tried valiantly to not stuff myself .....and failed.
Franktown was the last town before the canyon and from there the rim of the valley closed in. This was ranch country and most of the area by the trail was posted.
There was plenty of life, wild and otherwise, along the trail. The entire Cherry Creek Trail has been popular with bicyclists, joggers, hikers, strollers and dogs. None of it has been crowded but no part of it has been empty of people. I've seen plenty of bird life (including hawks and eagles), prairie dogs, Beaver dams. The only megafauna other than humans (technically "megafauna" is any animal over 100 pounds) I've seen are deer but I'm pretty sure I've seen signs of coyotes (tracks, droppings).
I think the herd of deer in the picture above is the third I've seen on the trail.
One last switchback brought me up to the Eastern entrance to Castlewood Canyon State Park.
I think I've mentioned that I've never seen a photograph that does the canyon justice. In real life, the view from the entrance (first photo above) is breathtaking. If you enlarge the top photo, you can see the cap of Castle Rock conglomerate layer on top.
The road in the picture runs through most of the canyon to the west entrance.
If you look really hard at the bottom photo, you can see the switchbacks of the Cherry Creek Trail. The mesas and plains extend our into the distance.
Hopefully, I will be able to return here to finish the Cherry Creek Trail.
