Today, Rosie, Mom T and I headed south into the plains of eastern Colorado to hike the Pawnee Buttes. I had hiked the buttes before, during the family's first trip outside of Nebraska during the start of the Covid pandemic. Today, I thought we could check out the Lips Bluff area. Lips Bluff is closed to protect nesting raptors for the summer. However, it is reopened for access right now.
We arrived at the trailhead and hit the trail, immediately passing through a gate. After the gate the trail traverses a flat area at the top of a bluff. Then, the trail passes through another gate before descending down off of the bluff. We let Rosie walk off leash since there were not a lot of other people hiking in the area.
She stayed close, stopping every so often to look back and wait for us to catch up to her.
The scenery was stunning, in a prairie sort of way, and the weather was perfect.
Once we reached the bottom, the trail flattened out and we made our way towards the west bluff.
We passed the base of the west bluff,
and headed towards the east bluff.
At the boundary with private property, we turned around and started to make our way back.
At the junction with the Lips Bluff "Trail", we turned left and started to ascend a set of stairs to the top of the bluff. There were great views out to the two Pawnee Buttes.
At the top of the ridge, we turned to the right to follow the ridge back towards the trailhead.
Unfortunately, we found a downclimb too steep to navigate on the ridge and were forced to turn around.
We followed the official trail back up towards the trailhead. Along the way we met a group of hikers from Loveland, CO and talked with them for a bit. They were kind enough to take our photo.
Then, we had an eventful drive back to Gering that featured a traffic stop and a shattered window.
No comments:
Post a Comment