Colorado Springs Trail Guide: Garden of the Gods Loop & Trailhead
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- Опубликовано: 16 фев 2013
- Link to Google map of southern Trailhead parking lot:
maps.google.com/maps?q=38.864...
Link to download Garden of the Gods Trail Map PDF
www.friendsofgardenofthegods.o...
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Trail Guide for Garden of the Gods 2 hour Loop.
Great advice on how to get there. I've lived in CO since 1975 and have never hiked the Garden. Your video will change that. Thanks!
Glad it helped. this was one of my favorite hikes in Colorado Springs.. I miss it a lot.
I was in Colorado Springs last week (Sept. 29 - Oct. 3) and 2 weeks before I traveled there I was looking for routes to hike at Garden of the Gods. I found this video and I knew I wanted to follow this route on my hike.
Since I was there for work, I wasn't able to leave until 4 PM, so I made it to the beginning of the trail by 4:30 PM (Sept. 30th, 2015).
First, the parking spot that is shown at 3:45 has been blocked by boulders, and unless you have a motorcycle you won't be able to part there. So I decided to park along the curve on the street before reaching the parking lot. There were no "No Parking" signs, and the curve was not painted red or yellow so I figured I would park there.
I started my hike around 4:40 and the first thing I noticed is that the first 200 yards or so on the trail are not well maintained at all, the weeds and vegetation are overgrown and you have to sort of move it out of the way to walk through it. However, the trail itself (I.E. the ground) is clear.
One thing I didn't notice on the video but noticed on the trail is the presence of dozens, if not hundreds, of bunnies all over the place. This wouldn't normally be a big deal but the main issue is that there are signs all over the trails that warn you about the presence of Rattlesnakes, so as you are hiking around (I was mostly alone on the trail that day) you keep hearing noises in the grass and shrubbery around you which makes you hyper alert for a second until you realize that it was yet another bunny. At some point (probably 20 minutes into the hike) I figured that if this place was filled with snakes, they were awful at attacking since the place was full of bunnies...if there were tons of snakes or other predators, there shouldn't be so many bunnies, right? I let my guard down and started really enjoying the trail.
There were a couple of places where I felt a little lost, mainly on parts where I reached a fork on the trail that wasn't on the video, so I had to make a call based on terrain...I think that happened twice in the hike and I'm glad that I made the right choice both times. :)
Around minute 18:00 there is a turn on the trail on a bush, which is still there and looks the exact same, so that was a good thing, but one thing that is scary is that the trail seems to continue (on the video) after making that right on the bush and making it to the spot where he says "this little spot right here...", instead of saying that you should go back to the trail by the bush and keep going, it sort of cuts at 19:06 back on the trail. Last week, you can sort of see a trail that continues from "This little spot right here" down the mountain, so don't keep going, go back to the bush and make a right back into the trail.
The "scariest part" was on the Palmer Trail , the section on the video completely downplays the length of this section of the hike, I thought I missed a turn somewhere because the trail kept going on and on. So I stopped for a second and watched the video again, and I found the spot at around 19:20 where you are at the edge of Kissing Camels. So I managed to identify a place on the mountain where I could potentially have the same view and kept going on the trail until I saw it.
In other words, in the video, the part between 19:06 and 19:07 (1 second) felt like it took me 30 minutes, so I was a little confused, but I made it to "the blades" (side of kissing camels) and I was back on business.
At 23:58 you show a little trail next to the white rock, that trail simply does not exist today. The shrubbery was super thick and there was no sign of a trail. I searched for a few minutes to see if I was missing something but it was clear to me that the trail had been swallowed by nature. So I kept going to the road and the trail continues alongside the road and then angles left to connect into the trail that was available via the white rock, so once again, I was back in business.
Everything else after that was exactly as described on the video, no surprises.
I made it to my car at 7:00 PM. It was getting dark but for the last 10 minutes or so I could see the car below on the street so I knew everything was Okay. I had my hiking headlamp with me and plenty of water so even if it went pitch black I knew I was going to make it.
By the time I got to my car, it had a note on the windshield from a neighbor that said something like "You can't park here, the street is too narrow and emergency vehicles can't drive through it, we are calling the police and you will get a ticket" - I guess they didn't call the police or maybe I made it there before the police arrived. I'll park a little further next time to avoid bothering the neighbors.
I was debating whether I should take all my regular hiking equipment (backpack/camelbak, hiking poles, etc.) since I didn't see anyone on the video hiking "with that level of preparedness" but I figured I would take all my stuff since I'm used to carrying it, and you never know when you will need a first aid kit, a headlamp, rain hat, knife, etc. and I was glad I did. First of all, I didn't see many people at the park, so I didn't feel embarrassed to be the only one with all that stuff. I only passed 3 people in the 2-2.5 hours of hiking and they were very friendly, didn't give me a weird look or anything like that. Second, the hiking poles really helped me, there are a couple of spots where the steps were large going down (especially on the Siamese twins loop) and the poles helped a lot, also, avoiding horse manure sometimes required walking on the very edge of the trail and the poles helped with balance. The backpack added some weight as well with all the water and stuff so more weight equals more effort and more calories to burn which is better in my book.
To sum it up, THANK YOU for taking the time and recording this video, it was an amazing experience and I can't wait to go back and do it again. :)
Nice 😌
Wouldn't do it alone the first time, am bad w direction.lol