Rosalie Trail

Changing Leaves on Rosalie Trail

In my last post about Rosalie peak and the surrounding area, I mentioned that, to get to the top of Rosalie, when you reach about 3/4 of a mile point in the hike, you should stick to Tanglewood Creek Trail; however, the alternative sign there points to "Rosalie Trail," which might justifiably be the cause of some confusion. Rosalie Trial really just skirts the base of Rosalie Peak, and takes hikers through the Mount Evans Wilderness Area, all the way up to the Mt. Bierstadt parking lot at the top of Guanella Pass. It's a gorgeous hike, and well worth your time.

This past weekend, we took the kids up for a longer hike to investigate the area. With the leaves changing quickly up here, we were in for quite an explosion of color, and the weather was perfect. After diverging from the Tanglewood Creek trail, there's a sold climb for a half mile or so, but then the trail flattens out in a lovely and dense Aspen forest. There are a bunch of great hike-in camp sights all along this section of the trail. After the forest section, it opens up a bit, with some great views of the 12 and 13 thousand foot peaks that surround the rest of the hike. This portion of the hike actually presents hikers with a bit of a descent, and you'll begin to hear the faint trickle of Deer Creek, which follows the lower portion of the trail for some time. We made it about three miles in on this particular trip, and then stopped for a play-filled break and a picnic at an shockingly green camp sight (the kind that inspires fairy stories) that butted up to the creek.

Although the six miles round trip was a bit tough on both our five and nine year olds, the views and amazing discoveries that we made along the way made it all worth while.

To get there: Heading South on 285 before Bailey, you take a right at the "Loaf'n'Jug" on Co RD 43 (Deer Creek Road). You take 43 all the way to the end (be careful where it intersects with 47--you want to stay to the left), where you'll see a "Fee Area" national forest campground. Pass the campground to the left, and stay on that road until it ends at the parking lot, which is the "Deer Creek Trail Head."