My daughter considers the hike up Waterton Canyon “boring.” And I guess for someone whose wanderlust has led her to explore the world from the Himalayas to Patagonia – and who now lives on an island in the South Pacific – maybe it is. But answer me this: Does a pristine trout stream with imposing two-hundred-foot granite cliffs on both sides which serves as the grand entrance to the 486-mile-long Colorado Trail from Denver to Durango strike you as “boring?”
On a normal summer’s day Waterton sees hundreds of recreational users – bikers, hikers, fishermen, and even moms pushing strollers – on the 6-mile smoothly graded dirt road paralleling the South Platte between the trail head and Strontia Springs reservoir at the top of the canyon. Yesterday there were far fewer than that. But there were 2 trail runners exercising their donkeys. So that’s got to be worth something at least, right? And if that’s not enough, how about a bighorn guard ram in the front yard at the Denver Water caretakers’ cottage at mile marker 3.0?
All this and water supply to over a million Denver area homes, plus hydroelectric power from Marston and Strontia Springs dams.
And a bonus bighorn guard ram too? Far from “bored,”
you can color me… well, positively electrified.
Also, well-hydrated.
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A related blurb on reservoir sedimenation from Denver Water is here. Of course the “sediment problem” is well downstream of other inter-connected and contributing ecological issues such as catastrophic wildfires and the fact that warmer temperatures allow over-winter survival of pine bark beetle larvae.
Guessing it will also be lovely to watch spring coming on.