Royal Arch Trail - Chautauqua Park

It is finally time to celebrate the return of hiking season! After a spring when the Colorado weather couldn't decide if it was ready to move toward summer or if it was going to stick with snowy winter, we seem to have reached the warm weather with the afternoon thunderstorms. I personally have no complaints about this landing place, since I happen to have a huge soft spot for rain showers!

To usher in summer, I decided that it was time to kick the hiking into gear this weekend and check out a new trail. As luck would have it, an old friend was also available to come explore with me, which just made the adventure that much better. I'm not opposed to hiking alone - in fact, I will do it with no hesitation if that's how things shake out for a particular day - but I happen to think that having the opportunity to catch up with a friend while enjoying the scenery is not one to be passed up! Even through the huffing and puffing that goes with a first-of-the-season hike, there are few venues that make it so easy to share stories about work, kids, family, and hopes/fears for the future.

So onto the hike.

After researching a truckload of trails in and around Boulder, I stumbled onto Royal Arch because it happened to be the right length for the time period we had set aside. The trail is 3.5 miles, and everything I read suggested we'd be finished with the round trip in about 3 hours. The descriptions of the trail varied from moderate to strenuous, but because of the fairly short distance I decided that we'd be fine even if it were a more difficult hike.

The trail started at the Chautauqua Park entrance, which I'd been trying to avoid because I'd heard that parking was difficult. However, I'm so glad that we wound up here because with all the hiking I've tried to squeeze in over the last couple of years, I'd never visited Chautauqua Park. For anyone not familiar, my friend hit it right on the head when she said that this is where every major photo of Boulder you see is taken. The parking lot is right on a beautiful meadow that leads straight up into the famous Flatirons.

From the trailhead, the path leads up Bluebird Road to a shelter for picnicking before it begins to hit the incline. Unfortunately for us, all the descriptions I read said nothing about stairs...but we realized right away that we were in for more than some standard switchbacks. Most of the "stairs" were rock outcroppings in the trail which later on changed to log steps hammered into the earth - most likely to help with erosion, what with the pitch of the trail. Regardless, the end result was a lot of stepping up to get to our end destination.

Even with the unexpected stairs, this is a beautiful hike. The majority of the trail winds through trees, with the occassional small creek crossing. Once you pass the false summit (which fooled me, and from what I could tell fooled some of the other folks we encountered on the trail), there are sweeping views of Boulder and the surrounding area just there for the taking. And when you finally reach the end point of the hike, the Arch and the views offered are completely worth the effort.



This is definitely a heavily populated trail, but the trip didn't seem to bottleneck until close to the end of the climb where the trail is more narrow. However, there are plenty of places to step off and let people pass if so inclined.

My personal take on the trail is that I would do it again - it's a good workout, and even having to park on a side street allowed for easy access to the park. My only hesitation would be the amount of people on the trail - as unlikely as it would seem, I actually ran into a co-worker headed up as we were headed back down. Since we work in south Denver (a good 40 minutes from Boulder), that was definitely unexpected!

Overall, though, a great hike with a good friend followed by lunch at The Sink (if you've never tried it, it's a fun novelty in Boulder - great pizza & beer, but that's another blog) made for a wonderful Saturday...and I can't wait to do it again!