The nice thing about living in the mountains is that you don’t even have to leave your surrounding community to climb a mountain. I live between Evergreen and Conifer, Colorado, and the entire area is littered with summits. None are particularly high, but a mountain is a mountain, and they provide pleasant, short hikes, and good exercise close to home. In Conifer, right across U.S. Highway 285 from Berrian Mountain (which I climbed earlier this season) is Legault Mountain. After parking at Meyers Ranch Open Space Park and hiking up well-traveled trails steadily rising through the forest, my wife and I had to get off trail briefly to get to the summit of Legault. This route was not on the Open Space map, but after a short distance a trail began to take shape and we obviously were not the first people going after this objective.
First view of the summit.
There were many lady bugs to greet us at the top.
If there ever was such a thing as a lady bug orgy, this is probably it.
This shot is amazing because it contains about eight mountains I have climbed: Devil's Head, Long Scraggy Peak, Raleigh Peak, Little Scraggy Peak, Pikes Peak, Thunder Butte, Green Mountain, and Sugarloaf Mountain.
Zooming in on Denver. One of many reasons I do not live in the city.
The amazing thing about the view from the top of Legault is that I could see about 20 mountains I have climbed.
Berrian Mountain
Longs Peak and Mount Meeker
The Indian Peaks
Chief Mountain, Squaw Mountain, and the James Peak area
Mount Evans area
Ilmarë and her friend Tatonka, who we were dog sitting.
Funny to see this in the middle of nowhere....Stupid cows.
