Hiking Round Mountain

More Round Mountain views near the summit.

Today we took on a bit of a longer hike – probably not a “real man’s” hike, but the Round Mountain Trail still takes ~6-8 hours to hike. We were able to go up and back the 4.75 mile trail (for a total of 9.5 miles) in ~5 hours, hitting the trail head at about 8:00AM. Other internet-savvy hikers had mentioned that this trail was “unforgiving” and “relentless”, and I have to agree with them. The first ~2-3 miles are a pretty grueling uphill slope. Afterwards, there is a bit of a respite for a mile until the final steep grade to the summit.

The Last Mile on Round Mountain

The trail, itself, is very well-marked, with clear mile markers and interesting “nature-walk” type plaques that describe some of the more interesting natural phenomena. They’re spaced well, so the plaques also make for a good excuse for a break. There are plenty of cairns along the way, but I think those are mostly a joke – you won’t need them!

Wildflowers on Round Mountain

The summit is a bit of a downer – there’s literally just a huge cairn at the top, next to the official summit marker. Be sure to capture the high views on the way up when you get the opportunity. There is also a log book – I think that all trails should have one of these, as it’s kind of fun to read on the top, while eating lunch. I think that ‘Rudy’ must be the Ranger, since he signed in the book almost every week in January – “trying to get in shape”, and “lots of snow”. I think Rudy is probably well above the “in shape” level for your standard American – hiking 10 miles in the snow in January!

Cairn at the summit of Round Mountain

Not from the summit - but on the way up!

Hiking Arthur’s Rock

Today we woke up eaaarly (before 6:00) to do some hiking at Lory State Park.  I am finding that spring is the best time for hiking in the foothills, because as the snow melts in the upper altitudes it cascades down to the foothills.  This creates a lot of ‘spontaneous’ waterfalls at the lower elevations.

We took the ‘moderate to difficult’ Arthur’s Rock trail, to the peak of Arthur’s Rock – there definitely needs to be some standardization on trail difficulty ratings, because I would have rated this one pretty easy.  Especially in comparison to many of the other ‘easy’ hikes that I’ve done!  It was a moderate uphill climb most of the time, with some extremely mild “bouldering” towards the peak.  ~1.7 miles one-way, so it’s good for an early Sunday morning hike. I would guess that it probably took us ~1-2 hours to do the hike – I know that we pulled into the Visitor’s Center at exactly 8:05 AM (they open at 8:00…) and were back in time for lunch around 11:00-11:30.