Seven Falls Trail

Hiking the falls near Colorado Springs

After two weeks of allergies kicking my butt, I was desperate to get outside over the weekend. Well, it’s more than that. There’s not a lot to do where I live in Pueblo, meaning that it’s easy to become a bit of a shutin and feel like a prisoner of Colorado’s ninth-largest city.

But cruising through social media Friday night led me to see the Seven Falls Trail near Colorado Springs, just 45 minutes away. This was doable. But I wanted to back out because I had a massive amount of work to do on the podcast (running this thing is a beast). But I made a deal with myself that I would get all the prep work for Monday’s pods on Sunday if I would just get off my butt and do something fun. So prep I did.¹

It turns out that the Seven Falls Trail is actually the Broadmoor Seven Falls, a series of trails next to seven waterfalls on land owned by the Broadmoor Hotel, a luxury resort on the Front Range. Now, this stuff usually turns my stomach. Much of the state feels like it is a playground for the wealthy; I went to Breckenridge last year for work and was kind of grossed out by it. So much of this place feels like uber-Gatlinburg. Or maybe I just moved to the mountains and became Karl Marx. I dunno.

But the price to visit was only $20 and lord knows I’ve spent more money on worse things so I booked my ticket and headed north. To get there, you park at a central location and ride a free shuttle, which takes about 12 minutes. Our driver was actually pretty cool, informing us about the Cold War fortifications built deep into the mountains.²

The big draw of the place are two big staircases, the first of which leads you to a spot called Eagle’s Nest and the second leads you up and over a massive waterfall. But first you need to walk about a mile to get to that complex and it’s absolutely worth it. It’s finally spring here in the state and the weather was perfect for a hike. Oh, I brought a light jacket which I didn’t need and also a 1-liter water bottle, which was perfect for the day, though I did refill it twice at the concession stand for $5 each time. That was fine.

Part of my job requires that I spent a lot of time this summer climbing mountains with Tribal Members. And at my size (it’s totally all muscle) that means getting some leg work in early and often. So I was glad for the stairs to give me a good workout.

Initially.

One of the things I keep taking for granted is that all of this exercise does come with a slight caveat: you’re doing this at elevation. According to Wikipedia, the falls begin at 6,800 feet and go to 7,200 feet. Not extreme for Colorado, but it does have an effect. So forgive yourself if you need to take a break. Breaks make these places possible.

I think if there’s one thing that drove me nuts was the exclusion of Native peoples from any sort of signs that I saw. There were lots of things about plants and animals. And there was this plaque about the mining boom of 1858.

But what frustrated me was the erasure of Native people from this mountain. Let’s be very serious here. All those miners in 1858? Well, they were displacing somebody. So let’s be honest about it. Why not take the opportunity to say that before this area was called Colorado Springs, it went by other names. And those names are found in the Ute, Jicarilla Apache, Kiowa, Pawnee, Comanche, Cheyenne, and Arapaho vocabularies, among others. And yeah, say what happened. It’s not going to ruin someone’s day to read about the past. But they might learn something and their engagement with this place might be just the better.

Ok, historian rant over.

Anyway, one of the things I really appreciated was the diversity of people I encountered. I get that it’s a tourist location but I talked to so many people, mostly in English but some in my nearly passable Spanish. I even noticed a gentleman’s 101st Airborne cap and we talked about western Kentucky and western Tennessee for a minute. I put his son on a fishing spot that I liked. I hope he goes.

Since I used to work at Walt Disney World, I tend to talk to everyone. Or maybe that’s just my mom in me. But I’m always offering to take photos for people, and this is usually the best way to get someone to take a picture for you. In addition to the waterfalls, one of my favorite things was seeing this gorgeous Ponderosa Pine, which is my favorite tree that grows out here.

Ultimately this turned out to be a great day. I get so grumpy out here because I’m alone (and Pueblo really is as bad as the hype), but this place really is something. It was extremely clean and the staff (who seemed to be everywhere) were extremely friendly. Including my waters and two ice cream bars (key lime pie; strawberry cream) and admission, I spent about $42 on the day. Really not bad for four hours in a beautiful place.

J

Hey if you enjoyed this post and want to help support more content, consider becoming a paid subscriber, which you can do via the button below. Thanks for being part of this.

1. Also I’m trying hard to impress someone and convince her of how outgoing I am. No, you don’t get to hear more.

2. I kept thinking of Terminator 3 when he said this. Moving on.