Our fifth full day in Colorado began very lazily. So lazy, in fact, that I was able to catch up on my blogging in the morning and post my update for day 3. While our morning might’ve started slowly, our fifth full day here did not disappoint in the least. In fact, it was on this day that we got to experience what ended up being my favorite hike of all the ones we did: the Flatirons.
Before we got to the Flatirons, however, we began the day by meeting up together at Amy and Aaron’s Air BnB over hot apple cider mixed with bourbon. We then made our way to pick up our brunch orders from Alpine Modern at the cafe’s University Hill location (there’s another location on Pearl Street that seems to temporarily be closed) to be enjoyed back at the Air BnB. I’ve mentioned this before, but there are certain things that COVID has created that I do hope stick around: one of them is the use of paperless menus that guests can download via QR code on their phone, and the other is the increasing abundance of online ordering that has cropped up all over the place. I elected to order the prosciutto tartine, and it was a pleasingly light fare that very nearly gave me something to write home about. Of all the places we have dined at so far (and recall that so far our dining experiences have been middlingly average), Alpine Modern is one of the restaurants I’d actually probably seek out gain. The cafe offers a diverse selection of tartines, burritos, sandwiches, baked goods, and hot and cold drinks, all lovingly prepared and quite tasty. That said, I wouldn’t say I’m totally blown away by Alpine Modern (as I only just very nearly wrote home about it, even though I’m writing about it now), so don’t raise your expectations too high, but I do think it’s worth going out of the way for at least once while you visit Boulder.
Following brunch, we made our way to Chautauqua Park to hike the Flatirons. We chose the best possible day to hike the Flatirons, as the weather was clearly on our side and we also felt increasingly climatized to the higher elevation. I’d highly recommend you save this hike for later in your visit to Boulder as we did, as not only is it one of the more strenuous hikes we accomplished on our adventures, but it also is just so exhilaratingly bracing–taking visitors over steep grades, past rocky mountainsides, and through picturesque forests to the most stunning vistas–that any other hike in or near Boulder might pale in comparison.
The first section of the hike takes visitors through a grassy, prairie-like landscape (I always found prairies boring) that from a distance would look to be a pleasant, effortless jaunt towards the majestic Flatirons but in fact offers a strenuous workout up a deceptively steep incline. We found ourselves pausing perhaps two or three times during this section to hydrate and allow our heart rates to drop a bit before we carried on. Eventually we reached the Flatirons Loop trail that would connect us to the Third Flatirons Descent trail, and it was this section of the trail that I found most engaging, as it’s more heavily forested and great sections of the trail were chiseled out of sharp, steep inclines up sheer, rocky ridges.
What I also loved about this hike was how the whole trek wasn’t a matter of going there and back again, retracing steps after reaching a summit. Instead, the Flatirons Loop trail, er, loops (obviously) in a circle so that we didn’t have to look at the same thing twice. (I do have a notoriously short attention span when it comes to hiking, so whenever I can avoid a trek there and back again, the better.) That said, the Third Flatirons Descent trail is a spur where we had no choice to go there and back again, up and and then back down. However, the whole hike up and down this section was so stirringly breathtaking that it was difficult not to become intoxicated by the crisp, fresh air that was spiced with a delicate aroma of fir, spruce, and pine, nor was it easy to resist becoming astonished by ever increasing heights that provided impressive vistas of the gorgeous, mountainous landscape that epitomizes everyone’s stereotypical recollection of what all of Colorado looks like.
And the summit itself provides views of Colorado that are so grippingly and arousingly magnificent and just so mesmerizingly and enthrallingly gorgeous that I don’t think I’ll be able to find the words to describe how lovely it was to see Colorado from such heights. And if I do happen to find the words for just how indescribably beautiful and impressive the view atop the Third Flatiron was, I’d worry that I’d unnecessarily raise your expectations so high that I’d ruin the whole experience for you when you make the trek yourself as you’d discover that in actuality I’d succumbed to overt hyperbole due to being drunk off of crisp, mountainous aromas of fir, spruce, and pine and hypnotized by wide, horizonless views of the red-brown hues of Colorado’s landscape liberally populated with dense, lusciously green forests. So, instead of continuing to fail in finding the right superlatives to describe the hike through the Flatirons, all I really can find myself saying is simply that you must fit this hike into your visit to Boulder. For if you don’t, I shall be very angry with you. And so, when words fail, a picture might be worth a thousand (apparently), so here’s a video I made when we reached the summit of the Third Flatiron:
Following our exhilarating hike, we made our way back through the rest of the Flatirons Loop (where at one point we found ourselves standing about 25 feet from mule deer that were so tame they weren’t bothered in the least to prance off into the distance away from us), and concluded our hike back at Chautauqua Park. We had worked up quite an appetite and were in the mood for Italian, so we discovered a restaurant called Pasta Jay’s. There are two kinds of Italian restaurants in this country. One is the fancy kind where diners are served dishes where the surface area of the plate is larger than the area taken up by food: bits of some red-purple sauce dribbled artistically around geometrically arranged cubes of food that aren’t naturally shaped like cubes. And then there is the “working class” kind (I don’t mean that pejoratively), where diners are served heaping portions of pasta drowned in red or white sauces at tables with red-checkered tablecloths. Pasta Jay’s was definitely the later kind, and it was exactly what we needed after a long, bracing hike through the Flatirons. I suppose I’d recommend you check out Pasta Jay’s. It’s certainly way better than, say, Olive Garden, but it’s no where near the deliciousness of a place like Trattoria Pesce Pasta in New York, for example.
As we were sitting outside on account of COVID, the weather turned especially cold pretty quickly. It was a curious sensation as we grabbed ice cold knives and forks and stabbed our hot, hot pasta dishes that steamed in the cold, cold air. The bottle of red wine we got likewise also found itself quickly chilled, and we joked that we wanted the staff to microwave the wine to bring it back to room temperature.
We concluded the night with some sips of bourbon at Amy and Aaron’s Air BnB where we also decided that for our last day in Boulder we wanted to get going a little more quickly than we did today and really pack some stuff in. So check back soon and I’ll tell you about our hike through Mount Salinas, a visit to one of those shops, dinner at a place called West Flanders, truffles at a shop called Piece, Love & Chocolate, and a view that provided one last ominous reminder that Colorado was on fire.