After Pikes Peak, probably the most widely known mountain in Colorado is Mount of the Holy Cross. Unlike Pikes, which sits on the Front Range flush against the prairie, staring drivers from the east in the face for miles, Holy Cross is hidden deep in the Rockies. It only reveals itself to those willing to hike. And as I discovered, hike a lot.
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I swear, the older I get, the faster time goes. Blink and three months go by. Here it is the middle of Summer and it’s been over a month since I’ve posted a single thing on this admittedly intermittent web site. Apologies for that. Time to rectify the situation.
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A couple of weeks ago, while the high mountains were in less than ideal condition for skiing and the local trails were too soupy from snowmelt for mountain biking, I headed up into the network of gravel roads in the Arkansas Hills for some random exploring.
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On the final day of the avalanche course I took back in January 2023, armed with our newly acquired backcountry knowledge and excited to start exploring, me and my classmates spent a good half hour peppering our instructor Katie for suggestions on places to ski in the area. One of the locations she mentioned was a place called Chalk Creek.
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Ever since I skied Mt. Shavano last spring I’ve been thinking about my next mountain. There’s no shortage of mountains around here. It’s sort of our thing. The question is, which one?
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It’s a secret we don’t normally share with out-of-staters but one of the things we love most about Salida is its mellow climate. Typically in winter, while the mountains — the mountains we can see from our living room window — are getting buried in snow, down here in the valley we’re basking in sunshine. Don’t tell anyone.
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Ah, fall in Colorado. Seeing the days slowly getting shorter and feeling the nights gradually getting cooler. Saying goodbye to the hiking and biking of summer and anticipating the skiing of winter. Time to downshift, kick back, and take it slow while nature works on changing its pallet from green and gold to green and white.
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Something you find out about quickly in Colorado is how distances between places get distorted by the terrain of the state. On a map, two towns may look close to each other but because there’s a mountain range between them, the practical distance, the distance you have to drive, is surprisingly far.
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