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| Hiking | 2.75 Miles |
620 AEG |
| | Hiking | 2.75 Miles | 2 Hrs 18 Mns | | 1.36 mph |
| 620 ft AEG | 17 Mns Break | | | |
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| partners | | Day 1 of our Colorado road trip we set off to find Mystic Falls. There are no routes available for this one, so we had to find our own way; exactly how I like it! We’d been told by a friend that there was 1 parking spot by an abandoned cabin and that way avoided a rutted road and made the hike a bit longer. The spot was open so we opted to try it that way instead of driving further as I’d had some tire issues recently.
We saw a faint path and started following it through the woods and then heard flowing water shortly after. We took an offshoot path and stumbled upon a bonus waterfall! After the excitement wore off, we’d realized that we were pretty off track for the actual intended destination and didn’t really see any clear paths around us. We knew we had to go up, so decided to just try and wing it up a super steep slippery slope. It was super sketchy with terrible footing and muddy areas up there. We did reach the top of this slope and realized we’d need to scramble up a cliff to get any higher. We searched for alternate paths for a while, but the group was pretty sketched out about climbing because the rock was very crumbly and unreliable.
I’m a little crazy and there was no way I was going back down that sketchy hill, so I pushed my body forward, leaning into the cliff and holding on for dear life as I inched sideways towards a spot that looked like it was safe to scramble up. I had a few scary slips but somehow got my mind calm and continued on until I was able to reach the top. Once I got myself to a safe place, I urged the group to continue and go the way I came but they did not feel comfortable and opted to head back down to find a safer way up (probably smart lol).
I could see mystic falls from the point I’d reached and I also found a trail once I was up there so I was able to head down a steep trail and yell for the girls to find my voice and then everyone was finally up at the top, woohoo!
We had it to ourselves for a while and it was really beautiful! Soon after, a couple of groups arrived - no one else had hiked there; they had all driven. We got some pics then headed back down the trail and linked up with our original path back to the vehicle. This one was quite the adventure and it’s always so much more satisfying to me to find a place when I don’t have a route! It was a great start to the trip and probably my favorite of them all! |
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| Restless between adventures... |
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