Misha came home Friday night and joined us for a hike to the Crag's and Devil's Playground on Saturday morning. A couple of weeks ago, we hiked the Elder Fehn Trail outside of Woodland Park.
So we could leave as early as possible on Saturday morning, I packed our lunch as much as possible on Friday evening. We were all up early and left the house by 7 am. The drive to the trailhead took about and hour and fifteen minutes.
The circled area is the top of the Crags hike and the overlook from our Elder Fehn vantage point on July 4th. The bottom pic is the North Catamount Reservoir.
We started hiking from the trailhead up to the Devil's Playground. A couple of minutes in, I realized I had left my sunglasses sitting on the front hood of the car. Ugggghhhh. I turned around and hiked back down to retrieve my glasses. I didn't need them so much since a lot of the trail was shaded, I just didn't want my prescription sunglasses stolen.
By the time I hiked back up to Misha and Chris, I was already out of breath, but we kept on going. At the fork in the trail, we went right to the Devil's Playground trail. The Crags trail veered to the left.
This was such a hard hiking day for both Misha and I. Neither she nor I were feeling stellar and had to keep stopping to catch our breath. It was mostly uphill with very few flat sections. Chris finally went on ahead and stopped at an overlook to wait for us.
Misha's posture here pretty much sums up how we were feeling! (Click on the pic to enlarge it.)
Misha and I finally made it to the overlook, but neither of us were anxious to continue on. Chris wanted to go further, so I asked for a hiking pole and Misha and I would go back down.
Chris wasn't happy about us not wanting to go further. He headed back down the trail in front of us and ended up waiting for us again just before the fork in the trail.
We continued on to the Crags. It was not nearly so much elevation and just two miles past the fork.
View of the North Catamount Reservoir
We reached the top of the Crags and stopped for lunch. There were a lot of people there as many people hike both the Crags and the Devil's Playground hike. The Devil's playground continues on to the top of Pikes Peak (about 14 miles one way). Explains why we were lucky to find one of the last parking spots.
Lunch was a nice break before hiking back down to the parking lot.
At the end of the day, I had over 30,000 steps. The hike was 8.7 miles and almost 2,200 in elevation gain.
Some days are just harder days to hike than others.