Mountain Hiking

Reynolds Ranch Boy Scout Trails 

There’s snow in the high country now, but the Boy Scout Trails in and near the Reynolds Ranch Open Space just east of Nederland still offer peaceful and comfortable walking.  On a recent sunny Monday, I pulled into the west trailhead and headed north along the Lollypop Trail, an old ranch road that wound through sparse stands of pine and fir. 

All the aspen saplings had lost their leaves, up here at about 8,500 feet, but the creamy white bark with black branch- and bud-scars, a few with splashes of orange lichen, presented a different kind of fall color.  I surprised a bobcat, nosing among the trees.  It bounded off with a flip of its short, white tail. 

I smelled damp leaves and grasses, a musky, earthy spice on the cool breeze.  Sure enough, the trail descended, rounded a curve, and crossed over a small stream flow.  Then the trail led up a rocky slope and over the shoulders of unnamed hills, with broad views of both old and current ranch land, fences, and buildings.

Within a mile, the road dwindled away, and the more narrow, intimate Blue Dot Trail took me eastward and into thicker and more mature forest.  There were roots and rocks, moss and dangling lichen, and fallen limbs making up a rich texture.   From a rocky overlook, the Eldora ski area and the Indian Peaks were spread out to the west.

The wind picked up.  Trees swayed back and forth.  A fallen tree rubbed against another with the clear tone of a pitch pipe leading the orchestra to begin tuning up, and certainly the wind instruments were doing so.  There was a tumbling roar, like water over rocks, a more focused or purer tone like a clean train bulleting past, a horn that might have been wind catching a sharp branch, the high pure notes of a chickadee, and the lower, more complex chittering of a squirrel. 

At the eastern end of the Blue Dot Trail, there is another tight thicket of 15’-tall aspen saplings.  Here, you can turn south and walk about a mile to an eastern trailhead for this area, but I continued west onto the Red Dot/Yellow Dot loop.  The northern arc of this loop is the Red Dot Trail, and the southern arc is the Yellow Dot Trail.  They meet and shake hands at the eastern end of the trail network.  It is a pretty loop, climbing among boulders and past rocky towers.  There is the remains of an old mine pit, with its yellow pile of tailings, and a good view of Sugarloaf Mt., off to the northeast.  Farther east, the trail drops over the brow of the hill and descends into mature forest, thick with deadfall, around the base of the slope, and then back up into the aspen grove again.

When I got home, they asked, “Did you make it?”  Of course, they meant, did I reach my destination?  Sometimes, I’m clear about that—yes, I made it to the top, or no, I ran out of time or energy.  Hikers can be strongly goal-directed.  I might even dip the toe of my boot into the water so I can definitely say, “yes, I did reach such-and-such lake.”  

Other hikers try to get to the top a little faster this time than last, or raise their pulse to a particular target rate and keep it there for a particular time.  There is an undercurrent of competition—with other hikers or with ourselves. 

A hike always has a starting point.  There is always a trailhead, but more and more, I find that a hike has many destinations.  Every overlook is a destination.  Around every curve in the trail…  If you pay attention, every step is a destination.  So, yes, I did make it.

Originally published in the
Daily Camera, p 2B, 11/3/2006.