One of the most interesting things about living in Colorado is the variety and abundance of geology all around you.  If you venture outside anywhere in the mountains, you’re bound to find strange rock formations, fossils, crystals, and all manner of other minerally things.  As a non-geologist I don’t know what ninety percent of it is but I find the whole thing fascinating and I’m slowly learning about it as I go.

Behind our house on Methodist Mountain, at the east end of the Little Rainbow trail network is an area called the Castle Gardens.  It’s this huge canyon that has been eroded out of the side of the mountain over the eons.  The soil looks like dried mud and in some places it’s very soft and mud like, but much of what remains has hardened into rock called bentonite clay.  Where the softer soil has eroded away there are deep crevasses and ridges and, in some places, vertical towers or hoodoos standing inexplicably over the barren landscape.  You can see the Castle Garden hoodoos from the Methodist Mountain trails but Ms. Seeking and I decided to hike down to them to get up close and personal with our strange neighbors.

Castle Gardens is identified on some but not all maps and there are no signs for it on the mountain.  You just have to know where it is, which makes it a bit of a local secret.  We approached it from the north as part of a big loop hike we were doing and followed the semi-dry creek bed up the hill until we reached the hoodoos.  The heavy rain from the previous few days had washed out parts of the trail but the creek bed made for a satisfactory alternate route.  

The hoodoos range from about 20 up to maybe 40 feet tall and some of them have what look like rocks balanced precariously on top.

Fun with geology!