The trailhead began 16 miles east of Glenwood Springs. The trail has a slight downward slope for the entire ride, making the return to Glenwood Springs quite pleasant. The bike shop loaded the bikes on a trailer and took us to the trailhead. One could have turned this into a 32 mile round trip ride by making the eastward journey from Glenwood Springs on the bike instead of taking the shuttle to the trailhead.
It was a clear, crisp, autumn type day with morning temperatures in the upper 40s, thus the need for a light jacket at least at the outset. Late September is ideal for such an adventure. I would shed the jacket by noon time. You can see a map of the route to my left. The rental bike company supplies the bike, headgear, lock, and a bike bag to carry food and water for the ride. It's the best $30 I ever spent. There were eight people who took the lift to the eastern trail head in order to take full advantage of the slight downhill grade on the way back. If one moved along, one could make it back in about two hours, but my intension was to spend the entire day and do the hike, which branched off from the trail about 1/3 of the way back. It did, indeed, take me all day (9:00 - 5:00) because I made frequent stops to admire the beauty of the canyon and take the 3 hour hike to Hanging Lake.
Perhaps the most dramatic photo. You can see the elevated westbound lanes, the ground level eastbound lanes, the bike path and the river. It took close to ten years and half a billion dollars to complete construction because of environmental and engineering concerns. In the end great efforts were made to preserve the canyon while opening it up to transportation and recreation.
Even as construction progressed, crews would walk the proposed path daily and make minor changes so as not to disturb the delicate environment. There were hefty fines for destroying trees or animal life around the construction site. These included $30 for a downed raspberry bush and $22,000 for a damaged cottonwood tree. When all was said and done, only about $150,000 was collected during the project. The promise of preservation was fulfilled.
The final resting place of one Samuel Gonzales. We should all have such a view from our grave site. Since he was put to rest in 1950, this grave site was there before construction began. Just another example of what great lengths construction crews went through to preserve the environment.
About a 1/3 of the way back, was a chance to park the bike and hike to Hanging Lake. It's not this rocky all the way, but the elevation rises one thousand feet on the 1.3 mile climb, so it can be a little tiring at times. A walking stick sure helps. There's plenty of shade, though. You can see the river and the railroad tracks below.
Well worth the climb, Hanging Lake.
After an hour and a half, it was time to sit on a rock, relax and enjoy the view. I had shed the jacket when I started the climb. By the time I got back down, the weather had changed and I had to put it back on. The descent was in some ways more trying that the ascent, because I had to be in braking mode all the way down and that was hard on the knees.
Just up from and feeding Hanging Lake, Spouting Rock was doing its thing. Water seemingly was coming from out of nowhere. With no melting snow nor lake anywhere to be seen, the only source of this water must be an underground stream of some kind ultimately feed by rainfall, melting snow or a lake at higher elevations.
