Today I finally found the trail that took me to the top of the Rampart Range Ridge that we look at everyday. With the weather cooling, I thought it a good day to head up the hill to see what I could find.
In the past, I lost the trail somewhere in the area of the clearing where the geocache "Scouts Secret Stash" is found. Today, I took more time looking around and found clues to the trail that goes from there to the top. I noticed a couple of plastic bag strips on trees. At this point, there was no clear trail but I followed in that direction and looking for rock cairns and more plastic strips. The strips were not very plentiful but got me to where I noticed a very faint trail. The trail took me more south of where I had been looking for trail signs. This was it...finally after several trips up to this point, I topped out and could look over the mountains to the west of the ridge.
Because this trail is very faint, I found it very useful to use the backtrack feature of my GPS. If you have not used this or are not familiar with how this works, I strongly suggest you take the time to get familiar with this. In sections where the trail seemed to disappear, I just needed to refer to the trace on the GPS to be sure I was heading the right way.
One thing about this route. It is tough. The climb is steep so up and down is work. There is a lot of area at the top that looks to be explorable. I think that the old Palmer Trail comes through there and also I hope to get over to the wreck site(s).
In other news, I have been working on a revised template for the trails on farrunner.com. With the new Google Map API, I can put most of the information on a single map, saving some navigating around. I have a few more ideas that I am working on so keep watching for new things. I have also added several new trails.
With Fall and the cool weather, I am looking forward to exploring more trails and getting them onto the website. The new format has been good in this respect, it takes less time to put together the page.
