Mountain hikes in Colorado are often essentially full day affairs. You often have to start early with the goal of making it to the peak shortly after noon because of thunderstorm risk on most days and then rarely get back home before evening if you're doing the hike as a day trip. Sometimes you want to do something shorter, though, especially if you’re trying to recruit friends who inevitably have evening plans they have to be back in time for or aren’t keen on too strenuous a day. Sissies!

Herman Gulch is one such hike I heard about that is sort of "Goldilocks" in the sense of being not too easy, not too hard, not too long, not too short and also easy to get to from Denver . For many hikes in Colorado you have to drive a few hours from the city, but the Herman Gulch Trailhead is just off I-70 at the Bakerville exit on the north side of the road, less than an hour from Denver without traffic on the highway. So, it wasn’t too hard to recruit my friends Jerad and Greg for such a stroll into the hills.

Because it’s so accessible, the hike to Herman Gulch is one of the most popular in Colorado. Oh, and it’s not in a National Park so people can bring their dogs too. The trailhead is located fairly high at 10,330 feet, and the trail climbs steeply at first gaining the greatest elevation early on. From the split in the trail to Watrous Gulch towards the right, the way to Herman Gulch is to the left and climbs gradually through meadows and evergreen forest for what feels like a long way. The trail is actually part of the Continental Divide Trail that goes all the way from the Canadian border to the Mexican border.

But we weren’t feeling that adventurous and only planned to go as far as Herman Lake, a roundtrip hike of 6 .5 miles with a 1,655 foot elevation gain. That averages out to a moderate 500 feet/mile elevation change on average, much less than the often 1,000 foot-plus gains you encounter when climbing peaks. Towards the end of the hike as you approach Herman Lake you emerge from the forest to open alpine tundra. Herman Lake’s elevation is officially 11,987 feet, which is somewhat above timberline in this part of Colorado, even on south-facing mountainsides like this where it tends to be higher than cooler north-facing slopes.

Herman Lake is a beautiful spot to stop for a picnic and relax, as Greg, Jerad, and I did for at least an hour. But don’t expect solitude on a summer weekend, though. You have to share the spot and the experience with dozens of your closest friends (and their dogs).

I tend to perspire a lot and often roll up the legs of my shorts when I walk to keep from getting chafed. I know, this is not a pretty picture I’m drawing, and Jerad the smartass, of course, took note of my “Daisy Dukes” as he called them. So now I’ve been given the nickname “Daisy”.

After getting back to the trailhead, on the way back to Denver we stopped off at Silver Plume on my suggestion. All three of us have probably driven past Silver Plume a hundred times or so on the Interstate without ever stopping. Why stop when you’re in a rush to get to the slopes or back from them in the dark or so exhausted from climbing a mountain you can hardly walk? The little town piqued my curiosity, though, and although not a true ghost town, it’s not far from one. Like other mining towns in Colorado that declined after the good rocks had already been dug, Silver Plume consists mostly of houses and a few commercial buildings dating from the late 1800s. If located in a more remote part of the state there’d probably be little left, but at least here it’s not hard to commute to somewhere there are a few jobs to do. What remains is a photogenic near ghost-town that’s worth a short stop from the highway just to see what’s there.