Mountain Hiking

Walking Gunbarrel Farm and White Rocks

The East Boulder Open Space, near Gunbarrel, is indeed open. The hills and bottoms are smooth and rolling. In early spring, the honey-blond grasses flow in great sweeping waves out to bright blue sky on a far horizon. Of course, the far horizon and open views are to the east. Turn around and look west, and the craggy Front Range, jutting mid-range, and snowy Continental Divide are right there, and even at your feet, there are a few spots where the rocky bones of the earth break the otherwise flowing surface. 

Gunbarrel Farm Trail is an old ranch track that heads due west from a trailhead on 95th Street. I walked into this grassland and gradually up Gunbarrel Hill. There were joggers out on this Saturday afternoon. Some were loping relatively easily, and others were churning furiously and intently. I breathed in sunny odors, and a bright red grasshopper buzzed by, across the trail, and down into the grassy stems.

I passed a thick, low stand of bare branches, and the warbling call of a meadowlark spun me around—but I couldn’t find him. I supposed I was being warned away from a nest, so I continued on. There was song on all sides. In another place, a lark swooped down and up, a toy kite on the gusty breeze. 

There were bicyclists, too. Several clustered at the top of a rise. One called to me and I waved. Then I stepped aside, and they barreled down and around a curve, much as the lark had done.

From the top of Gunbarrel Hill, the entire city of Boulder lies exposed below, and the dominant Green Mountain, Bear Peak, and Flatirons form an immediate backdrop. Dozens of ponds and reservoirs glitter blue. The trees are thick about the city. It is sometimes hard to remember that this area “ought” to be dry, almost desert. 

I turned around and returned eastward. About 1/2 mile from the trailhead, I turned to the south onto the White Rocks Trail and began to drop into the valley of Boulder Creek. Here, too, many ponds had been formed over the years, water storage and the home of nesting blackbirds, ducks, and geese. There were scattered prairie-dog colonies, and many, white bellies shone in the sun as they stood sentinel.

White Rocks itself is one of those places where the skeleton of the earth emerges through the skin. The formation is not as jarring as the image might suggest, because the bones of Boulder are everywhere exposed. Red Rocks pokes up higher to the west, and Mt. Sanitas and the rest of the Front Range reach higher still. Our skin of earth is thin indeed. But White Rocks is an abrupt and angular cliff, perched above the prairie—straight lines and right angles where the grasses roll and curve, jagged and rough where the grasses are soft. We can enjoy those contrasts.

White Rocks, with the snowy Continental Divide in the background.

A version was originally published in
50 Plus Marketplace News, 14:5, p. 9, 5/2008.