Gold Hill Trail Head - Colorado Trail

My mom, son and I headed to Colorado Saturday for our "ski" trip.  Before heading to the mountains, we swung by my cousin's house for a visit.  He has a really cool house in a very cool neighborhood. We walked to a sandwich shop for lunch and managed to talk a little about training.  He's a 2x Ironman and I'm an Ironman wannabe, so it was nice to talk shop and hear about his training. Maybe someday we can do an Ironman together.

My cousin, mom, and son.

I had been watching the weather in Breckenridge for a couple weeks and knew it had been warm for several weeks.  I didn't know they had their driest March on record.  My mom asked if I wanted to cancel the trip and I was quick to say no thanks.  The fresh air and mountain views would be nice, even if we couldn't ski.  It was 60 degrees Sunday, so I talked my son into going for a little hike.  We didn't bring don't have hiking gear, so we borrowed a couple back packs and made due.  The Gold Hill trail head is about 3 minutes from where we are staying, so we headed over there late morning.

 

We headed up the trail.  It was steep by our mid-western standards and with the starting altitude of 9,200' and peak altitude of 10,200', it was a good workout to say the least.  Colorado has a problem with pine beetles killing the trees.  They are then really susceptible to forest fires, so this area had a bunch of freshly cut diseased trees.  Kind of sad.

my son, thrilled to be off the couch :-)

lots of trees cut down

We continued up the trail taking in the beauty of Colorado and eventually ran into some snow.  We continued on, though we started breaking through the snow pack at some points making for tough going..

Just about to the snow.

Things started getting interesting.

When one leg would break through the snow up to about our knee, it was like doing a one leg squat to get out :-).  When both legs would fall through, it was inconvenient but funny.  My son fell through and asked for help and I said "sure, just let me snap a couple of pics first" :-).

I'll be right there :-)

You ok?

We were both chuckling :-)

Then it was my turn.

A little deeper and I could ice my knees :-)

I like the blue sky in the background

We had a great hike and I could see making a vacation around hiking and back packing in the future.  I asked my son if he liked hiking or skiing better and he said skiing because you go faster :-).  Oh well, I'll keep working on him.  I'll share some skiing pics in my next post.