We started this hike rather late in the day. The reason being that we set out to do a high mountain alpine hike and ended up turning back because of snow and ice on the road. So this was plan B. We chose to start at the west end of the trail, called Windy Saddle. The trailhead was difficult to find. We ended up finding it, hiding at the end of a lovely 1/2-mile Braille Walk. The bridge you see above was just at the end of the braille trail. It was a gorgeous day but it was clear from the start of the hike that this was going to be a icy and snowy trail. We dug the Yak Tracks out of our packs.
The trail winds its way down a steep ravine for about 1.5 miles with rock falls to cross, as you see in the picture below.
This trail had several sections with just a little more exposure than I am comfortable handling.
At the bottom, we reached Beaverbrook Creek and found Chavez trail. A group of hikers told us we could take Chavez trail following the creek part of the way and then back up to the cars.
Crossing frozen Beaverbrook Creek. A bit of a trill since it was not clear that the ice was thick enough to hold our weight.
We hiked up the trail for another 3/4 of a mile or so, and headed back. This hike is actually in a park close to Denver (just outside of Golden) but like the hiking book said, "no part of it is a walk in the park." I gave it an A rating for a "plan B" hike.
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