Green Mountain Hike

Green Mountain Summit

Green Mountain Lodge

Views of Boulder from Green Mountain

Elevation at the summit

Yesterday evening, Grant and I hiked the 5.5 mile trail from Gregory Canyon to Green Mountain summit.  The boys were all away for the night and it seemed like the perfect thing to do to celebrate a kid-free night together.  The trailhead is a five minute drive from our house, just past Chautauqua Park, off Baseline.  We started at 5:30pm at the Gregory Canyon trail, parking at the small lot where the road dead-ends.  The trail is steep in places, wide in other spots, with an elevation gain of 2,300 feet (read strenuous!).   There are several ways to reach the summit, but we chose to take Gregory Canyon to the Ranger Trail, which you pick up by the picturesque Green Mountain Lodge.  On the way back, we took E.M. Greenman trail to Saddle Rock and then connected with the Amphitheater trail back to Gregory Canyon parking lot.   The trail has all the natural beauty that I have come to expect from hikes in Boulder, but also a lot of variety at this time of year--loads of wildflowers; shady, woodsy expanses; dense forests of conifers; rugged, rocky patches; and, of course, breathtaking views.   It is an old trail that dates back to the 1860s, when John Gregory, an ambitious miner, created a wagon road to reach his mines at Black Hawk.  While it was the first crude road from Boulder to the mountains and stayed in use as a route for prospectors for many decades, it was later replaced by Flagstaff Road in 1906.   If you can spare about 2 1/2 hours for the roundtrip hike, it is highly worth the visit.