Another Good Walk in Boulder

Boulder Mountain Parks & Open Space offer another loop route

The Colorado mountains have been blessed with yet another snowstorm -- 15-18 inches on the slopes of Aspen, Breckenridge, Copper, Vail and Winter Park and 10 inches at Eldora, in the mountains just west of Boulder -- in the last 48 hours. But when the storm reached the Front Range cities, it tracked south of Boulder, leaving Boulder's Mountain Parks trails dry. With temperatures in the 4os, a bit of sunshine and occasional light breezes, yesterday was another ideal day for Nordic Walking.

This time, we hit a loop trail from the South Mesa Trailhead. We coupled together a bit of the Mesa Trail, too the narrow Towhee Trail up through a tight valley, briefly joined the Shadow Canyon Trail and returned to the trailhead on the Mesa Trail, whose southern section is the kind of wide, smooth unpaved route the I like for Nordic Walking. We walked 3.6 miles with a 64o-foot elevation gain.