LOST CREEK WILDERNESS • Less than 50 miles from Colorado Springs is a hidden paradise, a landscape of lush forests, high-mountain tundra, flowery meadows, boulder-strewn box canyons and rocky spires ...

LENGTH: Semi-loop hike, about 13.5 miles roundtrip and about 3,500 feet elevation gain DIFFICULTY: Difficult NOTES: Special rules apply in wilderness areas, namely the Leave No Trace Principles.

Scramble up this steeper gully to the summit at Observatory Rock. Another hike in the Lost Creek Wilderness, you say? Yes, but this one is quite different in nature from many of the other hikes in ...

Over lunch recently my good friend John Flinn and I were comparing notes about backpacking trails in California's Sierra Nevada because we both wanted to get back to the mountains. I was planning ...