Hike 43 trails, routes, or sections of trail that are new to me

quote for this goal:

Not all those who wander are lost.

J.R.R. Tolkien

My grandmother would have loved this quote. Although I tend to be more destination-oriented in my walks, she was very content just wandering through the woods, observing what’s there. Sometimes that’s a more enriching experience.

Yesterday I went out to Deer Creek Canyon Park, a county park about 35-40 minutes from where I live. Although it’s nearby I’ve only been to the park once before, around 2 years ago, just before I started on 43Things (in fact my usual avatar, the “red hat” picture, was taken here). I did a fairly long hike that time but there were still a few trails that I didn’t hike.

The Plymouth Mountain Trail (in green on the map) isn’t that long but it takes about a 45-minute hike just to get to the start of it, so overall it was a fairly long hike for this time of the year.

fairly arbitrarily limit this to trails or sections of trail that are at least a mile long.

There are probably a couple hundred possibilities within 2 hours of where I live, but I’m not going to limit myself to Colorado trails. Maybe I’ll get in one or two new ones when I’m on vacation in 2 weeks :)

Edit 3-9-08: I added the word “routes” to this goal because many hikes that I do aren’t actually on trails, but I would definitely consider them to be significant new hikes.