Anyone who has ever been here and anyone who knows the tiniest bit of info about Boulder can tell you that it is a very 'outdoorsy' place. It's be just plain wrong of me to stay indoors all the time so I took a good look at the hills out side the window, picked a spot to reach and went hiking. The particular spot I was heading for is called Green Mountain.

The melting snow made the path into a stream

The trail starts from a car park about half a mile past the last house before the foothills of the Rockies begin. It was a really sunny day so of course I didn't take any sun screen. Luckily for me Green Mountain is covered in trees (surprised?) so I spent two hours hiking up 3000ft in the shade. I really love snowy forests and that is just what I was treated to for the last half hour of the hike. I only saw three people on the way up and no-one at the summit (video 5.1Mb) where I sat for an hour taking in the incredible view.

Sitting at the summit

On one side the hill slopes down to Boulder, on the other side it looks over smaller hills and in the distance I could see the snow-capped Rockies (panorama 4.6Mb).

   Coming down was really quick, so I took a different path half way down to try and stretch things out a bit. There were a few more people on that path, possibly meaning a car park was close by.

Hiking through snow

I also heard a lot of shouting and was considering going to find out what all the noise was about when I realised i was walking towards a rock face, and the shouting was just normal for climbers to communicate up and down the cliff. Back at Levi's place we played Halo for quite a while and made plans for the weekend.