Chris found a hike for us this morning that was less than 15 minutes from our house. We drove to Palmer Lake and parked at the Limbaugh Canyon Trailhead. It was very informal and indistinct with no trailhead sign. But the parking lot was fairly full. Chris confirmed via his map that we were in the right place.
Trailhead
We hiked from the trailhead on Raspberry Mountain following the Monument Creek. Chris had his downloaded map handy which was necessary as there were so many trail off-shoots from the trail we were following.
You'll need the map to help you figure out where to cross over to Chautauqua Mountain and Trail. From there the hiking got more steep. With a lot of scree on the trail, we had to be careful on some of the really steep sections.
We finally reached Balanced Rock. A couple of other hikers and e-bike riders were there as well. We continued on past Balanced Rock after a short break and it got really steep going down. We also learned that there are multiple trails you can take to reach Balanced Rock.
Apparently there was a longer way around as one of the hikers we had just met caught up to us as we started a steep climb up toward the point of Chautauqua. We continued with the ups and downs along the ridge as it wove through some boulder outcroppings. We had to squeeze between boulders to get to the point on the ridge and found as we reached the point that there wasn't much to see.
The views along the way were much better as we overlooked the whole Monument and Palmer Lake valley.
Palmer Lake
Without much of a view, we backtracked and side-stepped our way down and then back up again, past the the boulders we had to squeeze through and found a shady spot there for a lunch break.
We took a different, much steeper descent back to the crossover point of the two mountains. This overlook on Raspberry Mountain shows Chautauqua Mountain where we had just hiked.
We arrived back at the Pilot after 4.5 hours. 7.15 miles, and 1,990 ft of elevation gain. It was nice that it was close, but I was not a fan of the steep climbs and descent and all the slippery scree underfoot.