It was Sunday afternoon. Super Bowl Sunday. I had no desire whatsoever to watch it. I wanted to hike. So did Journey. I heard it was a boring game anyway. Good choice, Madman.
We went to Canyon Creek Falls at Quintette. It has been 16 years since I was here. I knew the last part would be difficult but I thought Journey would be able to do it. The hike starts out easily enough on a dirt road for 2.5 miles. It crosses one of the branches of the creek that the waterfall is on. Bone dry. Ugh. I was not expecting this. What if the other branch is dry as well? That would really suck the bone. I would be very unhappy. Maybe I should have gone somewhere else. We continued on. Worst case scenario is that Journey gets a good hike.
We got down to the creek below the waterfall. The creek was not dry. Yay! It seemed fairly decent flow. About as good as I could expect after a month and a half of dry weather. Now the hard part. There are two paths, one on each side of the creek. My notes said to go on the south side. The north side path does not go all the way up to the waterfall. The route we took was extremely difficult. It was very brushy. It was very steep. I really wasn’t too sure about doing it and thought about going back. It is a short distance though so I kept going. Journey did not really want to do it but she is such a trooper. She followed me up the whole way, through the brush, over logs, up very steep terrain. I am so proud of her. She did so awesome. Finally we made it to the base of the waterfall and relaxed and ate a snack. I took photos.
Canyon Creek Falls is very gorgeous and is 83 ft. high. It was so refreshing standing at the bottom of the waterfall.
On the way back we took a MUCH EASIER path. I had to lift Journey over a huge log but that wasn’t really a problem. We crossed the creek and then it was very easy following the path back to the road. I should have gone that way in the first place though that log was a big obstacle for Journey. We hiked back up the mountain, getting back to the car just before sunset. It was a fantastic hike on Super Bore Sunday in Eldorado National Forest.
