Dome Rock, Mueller and more

Dome Rock, I presume

 

I felt trouble from the moment we left the visitor center. The trail dropped and dropped, so any return trip would rise and rise. Muller had been a destination long in the works. This weekend it fit the training that Karen and I had been doing toward taking trails into the high country. 

The visitor center at Mueller State Park sat atop a hill, one of the many Pikes Peak foothills rolling toward the easternmost 14’er. Looking west, one could easily make out the Sangre de Cristo range running out toward New Mexico, Monarch Mountain and Monarch Pass, then the Collegiate Peaks all rising above 14,000 feet. It was spectacular to see such variety of mountains from great distance. 

To reach the Fourmile Overlook we left all that high country behind. We had to descend for large stretches as soon as the trail began. We alternated between pine stands and aspen groves. At a few places on the trail we encountered nurseries of young aspens growing along the trail. Numerous mountain birds flitted through the trees, including mountain bluebirds and Steller’s jays. 

There were only a few places where the trail flattened for more than a few hundred yards. The trail alternated between steep rises and drastic descents. We coped and kept moving. At one point we reached a gate, the boundary between the state park and the state wildlife area, the latter now requiring a fishing or hunting license for entry. 

After the gate, the trail stayed wide but the signs became less frequent in the SWA. There were wide stretches of forest, more hills and no people. We seemed to be coming to a point where we could look out over the valley below. The large formations of red rock grew below us but the ponderosa pines and aspens blocked the view. 

Suddenly we were among boulders and pines, while the trail led out of the trees for the first time. The overlook presented staggering views down on Dome Rock and the other formations in the protected area. Fourmile creek was a rivulet in a green zone 1,000 feet below the overlook. Had we taken the trail through the Dome Rock SWA, it would have taken just as steep a climb to find the overlook. 

By the sixth mile I had been feeling the impact of the rolling hills. Ligaments and joints that did not usually hurt were strained. But it was fine, we would finish the hike, do nothing once I returned home. 

Only in our seventh mile did we encounter people. That was unusual – I could not think of a trail anywhere in Colorado where I had gone so far without seeing other people. A trio of hikers passed us.

Within a mile of the visitor center, the people poured forth. I stopped counting. I did ask the guy with the expensive camera what he captured, and he mentioned the beaver ponds. I jokingly grumbled that we could have skipped the hard inclines for a chance to hang out at beavers ponds. 

But I would not have traded the solitude at the Fourmile Overlook for anything. We had our uninterrupted time above Fourmile Creek and a placid valley of pine forests and red rock formations below.