Terminus: Boulder

It was a nice day to take a walk.

This terminus hike was different in that it wasn't a train terminal. There is a fleet of buses that run regularly from Union Station in Denver to Downtown Boulder Station in Boulder. Designated FF1 through FF7, they make different stops on the way. FF2 is the express, so I took it out. "FF" stands for "Flatirons Flier" named after the huge outcrop of iron laden sandstone that looms over Boulder.

[Flatirons from downtown Boulder]

Unlike the commuter buses that run in Denver, the Flatiron Fliers are comfy cross country buses. I almost expect a steward to come out on the way and offer little cups of soda and peanuts. It's a long ride, but a nice one through the mesa country north of Denver.

The Fliers run through the first area I lived in when I moved to Colorado, Broomfield. Looking back through the blogs, you can find past hikes I took near Superior, Colorado and Flatiron Junction.

Downtown Boulder looks a little "small town" but the city is home to a very big school, the University of Colorado, and it's a major Colorado tourist destination. Situated at the mouth of Boulder Canyon, it's a gateway to the Rockies known for its shopping and nightlife.

Watch the traffic - it's also known for reckless drivers.

From the bus station, I walked down to the little bandshell amphitheater located on Boulder Creek. Boulder Creek Trail parallels the creek through town and into the canyon. It's well traveled by students, tourists, and resident joggers, but not such that it's not a corridor for wildlife. The town loves its animals. It's the first place in the US to give pets the status of personhood.

Boulder Creek Trail is a nice walk, ending at the west end in Eben G. Fine Park. Eben Givens Fine was a community builder who moved to Boulder from Missouri in 1886 and took a job as a pharmacist in a local drug store.

[Boulder Public Library from Boulder Creek]

[Boulder Creek]

[Boulder Creek at Eben Fine Park]

A tunnel under Canyon Road connects Eben Fine Park with Settlers and Red Rocks Park. "Red Rocks" may sound like plagiarism. After all, Red Rocks Park is near Morrison, but, in fact, it's the same Red Rocks, known also as the Fountain Formation, that pops up in places along the Front Range from Wyoming to New Mexico. The red rock is arkose conglomerate and the "red" is mostly iron rich feldspar that was recrystallized under pressure from stuff washed out of the mountains after the uplift that formed the Rockies. [Correction. It was debris from the Ancestral Rockies. ]

(By the way, if you're curious, the word "plagiarism" is from the Latin word "plagiarius" which means "kidnapping".)

[Red Rocks at Red Rocks Park in Boulder]

I returned to the bus station along Pearl Street, especially known for its shops, restaurants and nightlife.

[Pearl Street]

Since I was in no hurry to get back home (I needed a rest and the hike was short - it was just a little after noon when I left Boulder.) I took the first Flatirons Flier to leave, the FF1, which stops at pretty much every stop along the route. 

--- Flatirons Crossing ---

2016

Flatirons Crossing is a shopping district in the town of Superior, Colorado. I have been there several times when I lived in nearby Broomfield and a House brother works in Superior so, planning for my endurance hike, and needing to get back in shape after the hot summer, which is my off season for hiking, I decided to take a long hike in the high plains between Superior and the Flatirons.

The Coalton Trail is a nice, broad, dirt trail. The most demanding part is the grade up Davidson Mesa. Once on top, it's pretty flat all the way to highway 128. The primary draw through most of the year is the view of the Flatirons, a steeply folded series of dark sedimentary rocks that loom over Boulder, Colorado. The flat, platelike shapes give them their name. In the spring, I'm told, this area is a great hike for looking at wildflowers. The Coalton Trail ends at the Boulder Alternative Energy Research station at Rocky Flats, the site of a controversial weapons grade fissionable materials factory in the last half of the 20th Century. I carried a dosimeter along but it didn't twitch. Evidently, they did a good job cleaning it up.

A short road walk brought me to the Flatirons Vista trailhead. It is similar to, but a little hillier than the Coalton Trail and it leads to a great overview of the southern end of the Flatirons and the Eldorado Canyon area.

On the way back, I decided to take an alternate path, instead of the road walk. That was a big mistake. The High Plains trail, in the first place, isn't a trail - it's a rut that winds crazily through cow pastures. It is very narrow, deep and has a curved bed that destroyed my hiking shoes. This same model of shoes lasted me for five years of regular walking and extreme hiking and a new pair is gone in less than half a year. The rocks in the rut were like gravel you might find in a terminal moraine of a glacier. About half way back to the Coalton trail, I gave up and took a farm road back to the less demanding, ankle pounding asphalt of highway 128.

A friendly biker evidently thought that I looked like I wouldn't make it back to Superior, so he gave me a lift back to the other end of the Coalton Trail. While I was recuperating, I had a conversation with a lady who was preparing for an Ironman Triathlon and I was gratified to note that she evaluated the High Plains Trail as "brutal". That made me feel much less like a whiner.

Anyway, I got my money's worth. The hike was great, except for the terminal moraine and I feel ready to stand up to a hike out to Waterton Canyon.