Fifteen for Florissant

View from Florissant Fossil Beds Shootin' Star Trail

In a few weeks, the turns of the road sank into muscle memory. Leave the highway at Twin Rocks Road and cut a few miles off the drive to the Florissant Fossil Beds National Monument.

The high plateau seems to call to me. At its edge lies the most bucolic picnic site in the Ute Pass area. I landed here in early May, when I had found an apartment and wanted to visit for the first time in almost four years. Snow-covered Pikes Peak judged me the entire drive. The rangers hinted at some broader showcase coming for the trails.

Zoom in for a lonely chipmunk

I had not seen Florissant this cold, and stepped onto the Ponderosa Loop and the Sawmill Trail coatless on a day when the wind sliced right through my long-sleeve shirt. I warmed as I walked, but turned around to the car before I completed any trail. At a brewery that night, I ended up in conversation with someone from the Fossil Beds’ friends group, who sung the trails’ praises for their good scenery and lack of people.

Hornbeck Homestead from a distance

For the monument’s 50th anniversary celebration, the rangers introduced a 15 for 50 competition, offering a prize for anyone who hikes all 15 miles of trails on the monument grounds – a bandanna printed with the park map. I didn’t need enticement to try Florissant’s trails, but I wanted that bandanna, so I planned to trek all 15 miles. Some fit people finished all 15 miles in a matter of hours – a few did it in four or five hours. Being out of shape, I was fine clicking them off across several weekends.

It was June before I could return, and the Hornbeck Wildlife Loop seemed like a good trail to begin the challenge. The Hornbeck trail begins from complex behind the visitor center and quickly disappears into the forest. The monument does not see many black bears during business hours, but does host large herds of elk and mule deer. Aside from scat and obvious burrows for smaller mammals

As I reached a clearing, a chorus of frogs struck up. I hadn’t imagined amphibians at these elevations but the limited water resources could sustain them. Creeks crisscross the open space, the waters barely visible, the courses marked by ribbons of grasses greener than those on the high prairie. In some spots those waters gurgled and flowed, but they were sheltered from the beating sun.

Those little waterways made life possible for the few homesteaders brave enough for winters here. One creek had a small oxbow pond aside it, one that would likely evaporate across the summer. The silence struck me. Every few minutes a car cross the monument’s access road or an airplane flew beyond sight. The rest was silence punctuated by bird calls.

Ground squirrels

The homestead appears early in this hike, but it’s deceptive like every view in this ancient lake bed. The trail still has another mile before descending next to the restored farmhouse and out-buildings.

After seeing plenty of scat but few animals but birds on the loops, the homestead had some surprising neighbors. Ground squirrels are among the monument’s most visible fauna, and I ran into a colony of Wyoming ground squirrels popping up through their tunnels and observing me warily. Once I stood still long enough, they emerged from the underground passages for longer views.

Clouds disappear rapidly in the Rockies. As I reached the homestead, the haze of morning drifted east and left only big blue sky behind. The clouds had kept me in long sleeves that I had to shed. The next segment of trail past the homestead was nothing but rocks and scrub, and I sweated hard over the uneven terrain, sometimes gasping for air. A passing ranger assured me that shade was coming.

Sounding the alarm on Twin Rocks

When the tree cover returned, the trail rose steeply to one of the few ridges surrounding the fossil beds. The views were inspiring from this little ridge. I knew bigger, more majestic lookouts were out there in these mountains, but I had to take what I could two weeks into adjusting to elevation.

Florissant promised lighter crowds but hikes into a wilderness not appreciably different from that experienced by the homesteaders (aside from wolves and grizzly bears, but I digress). I crossed Grape Creek once again, the almost imperceptible riparian zone a wonder to me in this arid place. Give life a ribbon of land, and it will blossom.

Quiet meadows at 8,500 feet

A week later, my car sat next to a horse trailer at a Woodland Park red light. I rolled down the window and into the window of the trailer said, “You doing okay today, fella?” The horse that gazed half-interested at the green mountains around us grew visibly active. I smiled and wished him a good luck. Aside from a few greetings to other hikers and having a ranger sign off on my hikes,

This day, I started from the Barksdale Picnic area, as good a place in the high country for a quiet lunch. One car in the lot, another pulling in, with five picnic tables situated on the narrow creek that narrows across the meadow. The trail turns uphill and out of sight. I passed a lady who said she saw rabbits and elk. The thoughts of both enticed me, but I saw neither. Aside from some chirping frogs and lizards darting up the rock formations, I had birds for company.

Crow in the creek

Not that all birds wanted company. As I turned across a bridge, a crow descended to the creek, carrying …. something. Until I saw the blood, I half-hoped it was next material. Zooming on the two dozen pictures, I later discovered the crow carried the front half of a ground squirrel or chipmunk. The crow had not killed the creature, but stole part of another animal’s kill.

The Twin Rocks trail wove across several meadows of grayish-green grasses before sweeping back into the patches of pine. The little creeks resumed, with the riparian corridors running to the park boundary and beyond. The ground was sometimes marshy, but the creek’s trickle provided pleasant accompaniment. A couple sat among the rocks, either picnicking or resting from the heat.

Lake on Twin Rocks Trail

I forgot them as soon as I saw the glimmer of a lake, an alpine lake not marked on any map. It might have been flush from the severe winter that hit the Rockies – the entire monument seemed greener this year. But this lake felt like a permanent, unheralded oasis hidden in the national monument. Bird swooped above its mirrored surface. I could not spot fish, but there were enough bugs and dragonflies to satisfy the birds. I sat on the shore and forgot about time. This was the place I needed on a hike this long.

The creek branched off slightly and the path went through the center of an immense field of burrows for ground squirrels. A lone squirrel poked from a nearby hole and sounded the alarm repeatedly until I cleared the field. 

Half of the Twin Rocks

The namesake rocks rose high over the trail. A pair of horses grazed high on open land near them. The Twin Rocks Trail ends at a series of fences and signs warning of private property, the extent of a national monument born from a fight over sensitive fossils and private land rights.

Twin Rocks might be the least-visited trail because hikers must retrace every step. The combined Twin Rocks and Shootin’ Star trails (along with a short connector trailer I took when missing the Twin Rock turnoff) amounted to a 7.2-mile morning. The last mile was brutal, the breeze dying as the shade vanished on the last open meadow before the picnic area. Aside from the 50th anniversary Suds, Stumps and Stars party on a beautiful mid-June evening, I missed the fossil beds for a few weeks.

After Independence Day, I craved to knock out the last trails. Two could be done together; all three could be done on the same day but not knowing the terrain, I wanted to space them out. The wildflowers were sprouting along the Sawmill Trail and its companion Hans Loop. The landscape rolled enough to provide some challenges to my untested legs. Birds sang everywhere. The landscape was interesting enough, and the lack of people promoted a solitude otherwise impossible to find.

I resolved to come back the next morning for the Boulder Creek Trail and the end of the challenge. A friend I recently met wanted to accompany, so I would not be alone on the last 3.2 miles of the Florissant 15. I had no problem, although warned I didn’t know the terrain.

Boulder Creek was mostly flat, following another hardy creek deep into the rolling, pine-covered hills and past piles of glacial boulders. Black squirrels frolicked among downed trees atop a ridge reached by some particularly steep switchbacks.

With signatures on the Boulder Creek trail and the “extra credit” square for a selfie with my favorite stump taken earlier in June, I traded my paper for a bandanna. The bandanna was nice, but the solitude and the little nature experiences in sight of Pikes Peak could not be traded for anything. With Florissant up the hill– by which I mean Ute Pass – I never need hunger for solitude beneath the gusty Rocky Mountain winds.

Twin Rocks Trail lake