Goose Creek Trail

April 2011
8+ miles round trip

Looking for trails along the Front Range that are not too crowded is very difficult. There is still so much snow in the Mountains it is a challenge.

When checking this trail out on the Internet it looked interesting so we decided to give it a shot.  It is not the easiest one to get to.  The trail head is northwest of Lake George.  There are two ways to get to the trail and both are long.  i went down to C. Springs and then west to Lake George on Hwy 24.  Beautiful day, although they are calling for a storm (rain and snow) tomorrow.
Just west of Lake George you can take co. Road 77 to State Forest 211 Road.  We went right by 211 road (no signs).  Lucky that we missed it because just down the road we saw 3 Mountain Sheep in a field.  We never saw them out in the open grazing.  I took a few pictures before we turned around and found road 211.
This forest road takes you through the larges forest wildfire Colorado has ever had. The Hayman Fire.  Very Sad.  it is a long drive once you leave Co road 77 to the trail head.

  Our destination was some historic building 4 miles in.  the trail is 9.5 miles long one way. Not Today.  So we started and the first quarter of a mile was burn area from the fires.  After that the trail is very beautiful to your left.   Rock formation like you would find in Utah.  Got a great shot up an arch called the harmonica.  The trail is on the northside of the creek.  The rock formation are on the southside.  The trail is very wide and not too rocky.  Some up and down bu overall a nice easy trail.  Once we arrive at the historic building and took some pictures of the building site (2 full ones and 1 just to the left).

 They say the shaft house is 1/4 mile down further from the historic house but we never found it.  We took the trail that we thought would take us to it but found out later we it was further down the trail. But, what we did find about 100 yards down the trail were huge boulders with small caves between the. unbelievable the size of them.  We explored a little bit and took some great pictures. We will be back to do this trail again.  Next time we will find the shaft house and also the secret valley just west of the boulders.

The Hayman Fires burned 170,000 acres.  Started by a wacky forest ranger with personal problems. It will take 200 years for the forest to come back to what it used to be.  It makes you sick to see the damage done by this devastating fire caused by this persons careless actions.