Sunday, June 18, 2023

Medicine Bow National Forest: Reynolds Hill Loop

 It's Father's Day and Sierra and I decided to head down to Cheyenne to hike and explore. Looking for a suitable hike, I perused my copy of "Hiking Wyoming's Medicine Bow National Forest" by Marc Smith and settled on the Reynolds Hill hike in the Vedauwoo area. It was an uneventful drive down to Cheyenne and over into the mountains. The biggest issue we had was finding the trailhead. After a brief consultation with the guidebook, we found it and set off on our hike.


The hike started off with a gentle descent along an old, closed two track road down to Crow Creek. The road was pretty badly eroded in sections.


Wildflowers bloomed in profusion along the route.


Soon, the trail entered a stand of aspens. 


Sierra saw one that she just had to climb.


After our short climbing break, we set out to hiking again, headed towards the hike's namesake rock formations at Reynolds Hill. 



The trail crosses two tributaries of Crow Creek at some sketchy wood bridges.


One on the other side, the trail traversed a meadow along the edge of Reynolds Hill 


before heading into another aspen grove. 


This next section of trail alternated between thick aspen forest and sagebrush meadows.


At an intersection with another trail, we made a sharp right turn and started to make our way to the opposite side of Reynolds Hill. Views opened up to the surrounding Vedauwoo rock formations. 



I made a wrong turn at one point and quickly realized my mistake. We stopped to take a look at the guidebook 

and then


continued on our way, this time in the correct direction. The trail descended into a meadow encircled with rock formations. 



It bottomed out at another section of Crow Creek. 


This section was dammed several times by beavers. The trail followed the creek for a bit, climbing along a rock ledge 


before rejoining the trail we had hiked earlier. Soon enough we were back to the car for the drive into Cheyenne for lunch. 


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