The Perimeter Trail

There is a little town nestled in a high mountain valley about an hour south of our house.  This town has many trails that start there and branch off into the wilderness, but there is one that just goes around the town in a trail that is several hundred feet above the town.  There are several places that you can start this trail from, but in the end it just becomes a choice of wether you want to be hiking uphill or downhill by the end of your hike. 

On this trail there are several points of interest.  One of them is Box Canyon Falls.

 There is a bridge you can hike across that is at least 200 feet above the falls in a steep canyon.

 The bridge ends in a dark tunnel through the rock that opens to a part of the trail that has at least 300 steps carved into the rock.  I'm just going to say that between the altitude and the steps - this part of the hike is a challenge and I'm not in that bad of shape.

There is another part of the trail that takes you past what has been dubbed the Baby Bathtubs. There is a gentle waterfall that you can hike up in dry seasons that is nothing more than a series of shallow pools that drain into eachother. 

 

Another area that you can hike will take you to Cascade Falls.  If you are brave enough, you can climb up the semi steep rock walls and get behind the falls too.

 

 

The highest point of the trail has fantastic views!

 

 

 

 

All in all the trail is about 4 miles long, but with all the ups and downs we ended up taking many breaks.  To hike the whole trail took us about 4 hours - much longer than we thought a 4 mile trail would take.  

 

With a little pretraining this spring hiking shouldn't be as hard for us this year.  I think we are finally adjusting to hiking at altitude.  There are tons of places to hike around here and so many trails I want to see.  Hopefully I won't forget to bring the camera.