Fall is here and that means it's the best time of year to be in the great outdoors in Colorado! Well, fall isn’t really here yet around Denver, but in the highest elevations of the Rockies the aspens are already beginning to change color. By highest elevations I mean 10,000 to 11,000 or so feet. Peak color in the 7,000 to 9,000 elevation range is toward the end of the month.

My friend Jerad were thinking about a hike, ideally one we could take his dog Luke on too . Dogs are OK on most trails except for the ones in National Parks and certain National Forest Wilderness areas. I did some research and came up with the French Pass Trail as a suggestion. The hike is near the village of Jefferson in Park County west of Kenosha Pass. That would be part of the South Park Valley, and yes there is such a place as South Park in Colorado. The trail starts at a high elevation of 10,520 feet, a level where there should start to be some fall color already.

We got an early start and lucked out with another beautiful sunny morning that only clouded over slightly toward early afternoon. The French Pass Trail follows French Creek for about 4.5 miles from the trailhead to French Pass at the border of Park and Summit Counties. The ascent is only 1,400 feet to the pass at just under 12,000 feet so it’s an easy gradual hike. And the scenery is lovely, a nice mix of stream crossings, valley views between the mountains, meadows and woods, and eventually some alpine tundra at the pass. Once you get to French Pass you have the view towards Summit County and the Keystone Ski Resort.

Jerad’s boy, Luke, a mutt mix of German Shepherd and some other breeds loved it. One of the things I really like about Luke is his herding instinct. Jerad often walks somewhat faster than I do on the trail so sometimes he gets ahead of me. That’s very upsetting to Luke who always tries to round us up so we’ll be close together for him to keep his eye on.

So it was a beautiful day of hiking in an area that’s normally very popular with mountain bikers, but we saw very few. Altogether it was about a nine mile round trip, but it didn’t seem as long because of the relatively easy terrain. Normally the tradition is to stop for beers at a microbrewery for a pint on the way home, but there aren’t any along 285 on the way back to Denver. We had to wait until we got back to the Denver area and had dinner.