Top of the world views nearby

Spruce Mountain: Locals love looking out from the overlooks

By Rob Carrigan, robarrigan1@gmail.com

The large, tree-covered mesa known as Spruce Mountain is a popular local track for hikers, horses, bikers and more. Visible from Interstate I-25, Spruce Mountain Road, County Line Road, and Highway 105, it is part of an important wildlife corridor allowing travel between the Pike National Forest and Greenland Open Space and Greenland Ranch. Douglas County has created over 8.5 miles of recreational trails on the property.
The Spruce Mountain Trail gently switchbacks up Spruce Mountain through a ponderosa pine and Douglas fir forest up to rocky overlooking vistas and a loop around the fairly-flat, forested mountaintop. Lookouts offer breathtaking views of Greenland Open Space, surrounding buttes, Pikes Peak, the Palmer Divide, Carpenter Creek and thousands of acres of protected open space. There are plenty of lookouts, ridges and meadows from over eight miles of trails. For variety, descend on the service road, hike the loop to the west, and hike back along the Eagle Pass trail, says information from Douglas County Open Space and Natural Resources.

* 8.5 miles of trails. Staying low on the easy Eagle Pass Trail will take you along the edges of forests and meadows. Moderately easy hikes to the upper loop will gently climb through shady forests to a wide and gentle trail that circles the top of the mountain. Small children commonly hike it, but keep an eye on them at the rocky lookouts. Ice and snow can build up on the shaded trails on the northern climb. The east end of the Service Road that Descends Spruce Mountain can be difficult, since it is steep and usually quite rutted. The western loop of the Eagle Pass Trail and the Service Road are moderately easy.
* Trail Length, It is about 5.5 miles from Spruce Mountain Road parking lot, around the Upper Loop, and a roundtrip back. You can add on another couple of miles to include the meadows and beautifully forested Eagle Ridge on the west side of Eagle Pass Trail and the Service Road.
* An interpretive kiosk and a port-a-potty are available in the parking lot trailhead, which accommodates cars and light trucks only. Trailers may be parked at the large Spruce Meadows Trailhead along Noe Road to the northeast. There is no water available at this site. Water is available a spigot at the nearby Greenland Open Space Trailhead.

Location: 13415 Spruce Mountain Road, Larkspur, CO. From I-25, take the Greenland Exit (167) to the west and travel ¼ mile west on Greenland Road and ½ mile south. Bypass the Greenland Trailhead and continue right on the main gravel road (Noe Road) over two sets of railroad tracks. (If you have a horse trailer or very large vehicle, park at the Spruce meadows parking lot on your left and take the 2-mile trail to Spruce Mountain.) Vehicles without trailers can continue another mile west on Noe Road to Spruce Mountain Road. Take a left and head south for about one mile to the parking area on your right. Or, cars can exit at Larkspur and go south six miles to Spruce Mountain Road to the entrance on the right.

Contact: Douglas County Open Space and Natural Resources at 303.660.7495.

Year acquired: 2003 – 231 acres fee simple, 2008 – 662 acres fee simple, 2008 – 458 acres conservation easement
Acres:  893 acres Fee simple; 458 acres in conservation easement
Land Category:  Preserve/Wildlife habitat
Conservation Tool: Fee Title & Conservation Easement
Cost: $8,985,000 Douglas County, $250,000 Great Outdoors Colorado, $1,875,000 United States Department of Agriculture – grant pending
Partners: Great Outdoors Colorado, The Conservation Fund, Douglas County, private conservation buyers. United States Department of Agriculture and Colorado State Forest Service
Location: Three and half miles north of Palmer Lake. Six miles south of Larkspur, with access along Spruce Mountain Road. The property is located between Perry Park Road and Spruce Mountain Road, south of Noe Road in the South I-25 Conservation Corridor.

Wolverines in Colorado?

My dad, a life-long resident of the state and currently living in the southwestern corner, swears that there are wolverines in Colorado. Not only that, but he also claims he has spotted the beast twice in the last few years.
“From an official standpoint,” notes Tyler Baskfield, spokesman for the Colorado Division of Wildlife, “ They do not exist here in the state.”
“There are reported sightings throughout the state – mostly at higher elevations,” Baskfield acknowledges. The animals are difficult to document because “they roam 60 or so miles a day, that makes it hard to keep up with them.”
Not far from here, in February of 1966, came the report of the slaying of wolverine, at that time, the first verified in Colorado in more than 25 years.
“The animal was shot Friday by Roy Goecker of 4900 S. Wadsworth Blvd., Littleton, a professional guide, while he was hunting mountain lions along Pine Creek near Rampart Range in Douglas County,” wrote Al Nakkula of the Rocky Mountain News more than 40 years ago.
“Goecker told game officials his three hunting dogs came across the scent of the wolverine and pursued it into a rocky draw where the animal was cornered in deep snow. The guide said he was compelled to shoot the wolverine because of the known ferocious nature of the animal, to save his dogs.”
Nakkula’s Rocky Mountain News story at the time cited Herman Schultz, a wildlife conservation officer for the State Game, Fish and Parks Department, as saying the that the wolverine easily could have destroyed Goecker’s hunting dogs.
“He estimated the brown-black wolverine, a female about three feet long and weighing 21 pounds, was about 20 years old. Although the animal still had long sharp claws, her normal large fangs were nearly worn down to the gums because of age,” the report said.
According to San Francisco State University Department of Geography, the species officially named Gulo Gulo, but commonly known as wolverine, glutton, skunk bear, Indian devil, and carcajou, is a fairly elusive critter.
“Basic information on wolverine habitat relationships is almost non-existent,” says the University’s web site. “They generally inhabit areas above timberline, oftentimes preferring lower-elevation forests during winter. Wolverines occur in such low numbers across most of their remote habitat, and are so mobile; that it has been is extremely difficult to study them.”
“Healthy populations of wolverines appear to exist in Montana and Idaho, but scientists have been unable to locate populations in other plausible mountain locations, such as southwest Colorado or the Cascades of Washington,” says San Francisco State University’s site, “They have evaded trap and camera in California for over 75 years.”
The Department of Geography at Michigan State University (Wolverines) notes that extensive scientific efforts in California and Michigan have failed to prove that they still inhabit those states.
“Since 1979 Colorado wildlife officers have investigated more than 100 sightings and snow tracks, but by the time they return with a camera, the tracks have invariably drifted over. The closest they’ve come to a real wolverine was in 1982, when they nabbed an escapee from a Colorado Springs zoo who had gotten himself hopelessly tangled in a Denver window well,” according the Michigan State University’s Department of Geography web site.
###

No excuses, perhaps understanding

Bad is never good, until worse happens.
Difficult times are relative. In order to grasp how a particular attitude may have developed, it is important to know the history surrounding it. The history offers no excuses, but perhaps understanding.
“I was about ten years old when the Utes were moved to western Colorado,” wrote Margaret Benn, longtime Douglas County resident and historian in the early 1960s. “So, as a youngster on the ranch, I had several personal experiences that made me very sad to think I was not big enough to kill an Indian. In fact I will confess I was 35 or 40 years old before that desire finally faded entirely out of my mind.”
From 1860 to 1875, families living in the settlements near Glen Grove School on Upper West Plum Creek in Douglas County were compelled to protect their own scalps if they wished to continue wearing them, according to Benn’s letters.
“They formed the practice of keeping each other posted on the temper and location of all Indians, who might be roving the hills. Any sign of danger in any region was quickly communicated to others,’ she said,
“But settlers did not live in terror, as many imagined they did. They could cope with the primitive, elemental savagery of pioneer life in pretty much the same spirit of native birds who sang and nested happily, even though the hawks and eagles constantly soared overhead.”
Benn had come to Colorado from Missouri at the tender age of three and her family settled near an uncle’s homestead on Spring Creek.
“My Uncle George (Dakan) had helped build Fort Washington and was a member of the cavalry troop under Captain John A. Koontz. Very naturally, I grew up in that neighborhood, from early childhood to maturity among the original settlers, I heard their experiences often told and retold, by the men, women and children that made Fort Washington their haven of refuge,” Benn wrote.
Today, although there are no visible remains of the log stockade that enclosed a homestead cabin and a large well near Larkspur, the Ben Quick ranch, which was built later in 1885, marks the spot of Fort Washington. The site has been on the National Register of historic places since 1974.
“And when my family took up life in that community, the Ute Indians still roamed the hills and valleys for many miles both north and south of us. The east slope of the mountains from near where Fort Collins now stands, to Canon City was their home and their original hunting grounds,” according to Benn’s letters.

###