Castlewood Canyon in summer

Castlewood Canyon was a sloppy mess the last time I followed its trails, stretches of ice only broken by mud. My boots broke, the trail tearing a hole from which the left boot would not recover. But in July, the surprise state park between Denver and Colorado Springs was a different animal. Not better, but distinctly different from the season. 

Tim and I started from a different trailhead – last time, the group started from the visitor center parking lot, descended into the canyon, the ascended and descended several more times. The trail ran through a series of ruins, including a decrepit house with three walls that I dubbed a Denver starter home. Soon enough we arrived in the woods, the air still cool and the sun not yet rising over the lip of the canyon. 

Early into the hike, a toad sprang onto the trail and landed on a boulder. Most other park wildlife this morning stuck to the cliffs and skies. Castlewood Canyon remains an intriguing state park, combining an unexpected canyon with a tragic piece of the Front Range’s past. 

 Cherry Creek was not a raging stream, but it had a wide riparian zone thanks to Castlewood Canyon’s walls looming above the flowing waters. Not a broad waterway, it nonetheless provided a good share of Denver’s water once impounded at a reservoir on the city's south side. 

Once it held the water here, and the shores still bore evidence of the dam that split open during the Great Depression. 

We climbed a series of switchbacks through the rocky flanks of the canyon. Complicated as they were, we reached the flat top of the canyon pretty quickly. Views to the south of Pikes Peak, views to the north offered Mount Evans and more of the Front Range. Cherry Creek flows through boulder fields, with small waterfalls growing larger as the canyon deepens. 

Vultures soared high above the canyon, not over a carcass, but this was a nesting site where they could fledge their young in relative safety. From their heights, there’s no glimpse of fleshy heads, just large birds moving with the updrafts.

The odd times for celebrating Independence Day made me forget that Saturday was July 4. I only remembered the holiday when four Colorado Air National Guard jets flew over the canyon, having just buzzed above Monument’s July 4 parade. Most people looked up as they traversed Castlewood Canyon, the rumpled canyon on the plains briefly overshadowed by soaring jets.

Broken dam and a blue sky