Best Desert Hike to impress

agregc · Post by **agregc** » Jul 30 2003 8:54 pm

Went to Colorado last weekend to hike a 14'r with my cousin who I hadn't seen in years. Really enjoyed it and the scenery was awesome. He's planning a trip down here next spring, and wants a not-to-strenuous desert hike with good scenery. He also said he likes a hike to have a point that you're trying to reach, like reaching the peak of the mountain. Most of the hikes I can think of, like Flatiron, are more strenous than he'll want to do.

Looking for opinions and suggestions for hikes that might fit these criteria.

Desert hike
Not overly difficult
Has a point, or a goal, to reach

Thanks!

Rodney · Post by **Rodney** » Jul 31 2003 11:44 pm

HikerInGilbert wrote: Thinkin' it means 14'er like in 49'ers.

I'm clueless most of the time. So...

When I first read it, I thought it might mean 14 mile round trip. I guess between the two of us, we have clueless covered!

I've yet to do Camelback...too many footprints to look at!

agregc · Post by **agregc** » Aug 01 2003 5:38 am

Yeah, we cheated and drove up to 12,500 ft before starting the climb. Once we got to the peak, we saw that some folks had driven almost all the way to the top! Couple of suv's parked about 200 ft from the summit, on the saddle. We did Bross (one of the easiest, I'm told) and took the saddle over to Cameron and Democrat. Had a perfect temperature day, low 70's and sunny, but began to cloud up and pop lightening nearby, on the way down, so we hauled pumpkin back to the truck! The elevation had me breathing harder than I would have here probably, and I had been told so much that I wouldn't have time to get acclimated to the elevations since I flew up there on Friday and hiked on Sat, that I tried to be aware of that and not push myself too hard. It only took about 45 - 60 minutes to get to the top. To compare, I think it took me about 2.5 hours to do Flatiron, although we did get off the main trail and have to backtrack the one time I did that. Flatiron was just a more rugged hike, I guess. No boulders to climb and it's not like stairclimbing, just a steady grade up. I tried to post a couple of pictures to my "personal gallery" here, but they were too big. Maybe I'll resize them this weekend and post. Not sure how to link that to a note here, so if anyone can tell me, please do.