Garden of the Gods 4-25-15

5 or 6 mile hike from the main lot in Garden of the Gods down to the Trading post and to Balancing Rock and then back to the main lot in a loop.  We really enjoyed the route up from the Trading Post via Siamese Twins and Palmer Trail.  Runtotal 53 miles or so.

White-throated Swifts

Rock pigeon

More Swifts

Black-billed Magpie and Western Scrub Jay

Which one is better, do you think?

Wavyleaf Dandelion

Fountain Creek Nature Center 4/18/15

Birding 101 with Steve Getty and Linda Hodges today.

http://ebird.org/ebird/view/checklist?subID=S22925614

lots of bunnies

alpenglow

Red-winged Blackbird

Wood Duck

Mourning Dove

Fast water from recent snow/rain

American Robin

Muskrat

Say's Phoebe

Snowy Egret

Northern Shoveler

Black-crowned Night Heron

Face-off? :)

Belted Kingfisher

Killdeer

Canada Goose

turtles

American Coot

Sundance Mountain 4-11-15

We went up the Ice Cave Creek trail and got distracted by a Bearing Tree and survey marker long enough to decide to try to place a cache nearby to drop off a travel bug.  After that we continued on the Swank Trail and then decided to do Sundance.  Lots of social/other trails not on maps, but we ended up summiting both North and South Sundance mountains and happening across a summit geocache. Rather than backtracking to try to find the appropriate trail down that we missed on the way in, we followed a faint/screed/old trail down about 750 feet elevation from the summit back to the reservoirs.  When we got to the bottom the trail was completely undiscernable looking back right at it, and it is obviously rarely used and little known.  Distance 5 miles maybe, runtotal 47.5.

N Monument Creek

lower reservoir dam

lower reservoir

Red-breasted Nuthatch - tapping in the wood and eating little somethings

crossing Ice Cave Creek

by the bearing tree - Range/Township marker

North Summit of Sundance Mountain

Mt. Herman

Sand Lily

upper reservoir