Roxborough State Park

Last Saturday, the day after we had a snowstorm and went to Vail, it was 70 degrees outside. So Mr X and I journeyed to another state park to go exploring. There are few places here that have loads of 'hogback' rock formations. This was another one of them. We took one of the longer hiking trails available - 6 miles round trip, I believe - that goes from the base up to the top of the ridge. The trail starts out quite flat and it's closed in by these scraggly oak trees on either side. It lends a sense of creepiness to the trail but I imagine that in the summer and/or fall it would be quite beautiful to see.
However, the trail quickly start increasing in altitude enough so that we felt a bit like we were climbing stairs most of the way up. The views were spectacular.

(If you look closely at the photo below you can just make out the faint outline of downtown Denver.)

(Once we got to the top of the ridge, if we looked to the east we saw what is captured in the photo above. If we turned and looked west we saw the view captured below. It's quite a stark difference in landscape.)