Fountain Valley Trail

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Last week’s fail

Last week we missed out on our hike of the week. What can I say? Football and lazyness got in the way.

This weekend however, we made it a priority to get outside and enjoy the 60F weather that has been blessing us most of January, and get some fresh air ahead of snowstorm that is currently upon us in Colorado, 12″ of pure white powdery snow. A beauty!

Keeping it simple

One of the reasons we never hiked before unless we were on vacation was proximity to good, local parks. When we moved to Colorado, that all changed. In addition 4 National Parks, Colorado has 42 State Parks that provide a variety of activities for the whole family. However, these parks are not all in our backyard, so getting out of the house for a 1 hr drive, 3 hr hike and another 1hr drive back can be quite a deflating thought. So we decided to keep our weekly hikes at a short distance and during the summer, we can venture out for a long weekend and longer hikes – we are looking at a couple fouteeners (peaks above 14,000ft) to conquer this year.

Fountain Valley Trail

Roxborough State Park is one of our favorite parks to hike. We fell in love with it while house hunting the summer before our move.

This park boasts 4,000 acres and several trails that are short and range from easy to moderate difficulty. The trails are well marked and provide breathtaking views of the jagged red rock formations that are common in other areas like Red Rocks Park and Garden of Gods. Roxborough also offers a clear view of Denver’s downtown (however not in this trail), beautiful wild flowers in the summer and if you hike around sunset, plenty of wildlife – deer and foxes are commonly sighted. As with most parks in Colorado, bears, mountain lions and snakes are also inhabitants, but rarely seen.

The Fountain Valley Trail was a gorgeous 2.2 mile loop hike that is quite wide and around open landscape, it would be a great trail for running – if you are into that kind of thing.  The trail is considerate moderate, mostly because of the mild incline and the general elevation factor of the park (5,750ft) that will whoop anybody’s butt if you are not used to it.

The overall trail condition was muddy and at times icy from our last snowfall and recent great weather. With that said, Fountain Valley Trail was a great, and fairly easy hike to put us back on the path of hiking 52 trails this year. I am looking forward to what we will get up to this weekend. Maybe try out some snowshoeing since we have plenty of snow on the ground?

I will report back next Wednesday if we manage to get outside, after all it’s Superbowl weekend, and I will be getting plenty of cardio watching the Broncos.

This website contains affiliate links. As an Amazon Associate and participant in other programs, I may earn a small commission from qualifying purchases.