Last November someone had a grand idea that we should try to hike 100 miles of different trails in Colorado. This is easy in the sense that there are over 800 miles of hiking trails in the Denver area alone, so, there are plenty of trails to choose from. Also I would say that the weather is perfect for hiking for half the year here, if not more. So really it’s just up to our lungs and our legs to make it happen. With the unseasonably warm weather this weekend we decided to add some mileage to our list. The hike was supposed to be ~2.2 miles and include the ruins of Mount Falcon Castle. The “castle” was the home of John Brisben Walker, a craftsman-style chalet built in 1909 by stonemasons from Italy. It included 10 bedrooms, eight fireplaces, a music room, an observation deck, library, and servants quarters. The house was stuck by lighting in 1918 and burned down. From the parking lot area to the ruins is a quick, easy walk on a wide crushed gravel path. Then you loop around to a few really neat lookouts in the area. Except we took a wrong turn and ended up heading down the trail toward the trail head in Morrison (NOT where we parked). Notice I said “down”. After a mile I noticed the trail hadn’t really turned back in the direction we parked and we had to trudge back “up” that mile and continue our loop finishing with a total of 5 miles. Casey muttered “I thought I heard my phone say “off course”… So far we have 10.6 miles of our 100 miles.
