Tanglewood Trail
From Hiking
| Tanglewood Trail | ||
|---|---|---|
| Location: | Bailey | |
| Maintained By: | National Forest Service | |
| Starting Elevation: | 9300' | |
| Elevation Gain: | 2300' | |
| Length: | 7.0 miles | |
| Difficulty: | strenuous to very strenuous | |
| Last Hiked: | ||
[edit] Finding the Trail Head
From Golden, take C-470, turn right on US-285 (south) and follow it almost to Bailey. Turn right on CR-43A (at the Park County Library). After about 7.5 miles, angle left to stay on CR-43 (If you keep on the "main" road, you'll be on CR-47). The Deer Creek parking lot is about 1.5 miles. The last .75 miles is dirt and gets very rough.
[edit] Description
For the first half of the hike, the trail follows Tanglewood creek. The trail starts out easy, forks (the Rosalie trail branches to the left), and enters the Mount Evans Wilderness Area after about .7 miles.
After the first half mile, the trail becomes unrelentingly steep, following rocky dry creek beds for several miles. The creek is small, but noisy owing to the steepness of the valley. After the halfway point (at about 11,000'), the trail crosses the creek one last time and begins to switch back up to the tree line. The last 500' of elevation gain is above the tree line and straight up to a saddle at 12,000'.
[edit] Experience
The hike is gorgeous, but exhausting. The last part is ridiculously steep and heavily eroded by runoff down the bare slope. The view from the saddle is nice once you catch your breath. Although I made it to the saddle, I was definitely not in good enough shape for this hike. It was a killer!
Our first foray on the Tanglewood Creek trail was attempted on the day after an evening birthday party where many of us drank too much and all of us stayed up too late. It proved brutal and we didn't even make it half way to the saddle!
