This has to be one of the best marked trails I have ever hiked upon.

At the Visitor Center, we had picked up a copy of the Trails Map to carry with us. We had no idea how well marked the trails would be and didn’t want to chance getting lost or too far away from the starting point if the weather turned ugly.

There are many trails in Cheyenne Mountain State Park and they cross over each other in many places, so it could get confusing.

The map in the brochure and the one’s along on the trails has all the trails color coded. Brilliant!

At many junctures, this very map was placed with the very helpful “You Are Here” arrow.

It also shows how it is oriented relating to the highway 115, so one can avoid hiking along that noisy road if one so chooses.

We opted to take trails that were headed into the hilly areas and away from the traffic sound as much as possible.

What made it even easier to discern which trail you were on, there were little “lollipop” trail marker at the junctures.

Some were also placed along the trail to assure you that you were on the trail you meant to be hiking upon.

And if one is into GPS readings the maps and some trail markers also had that information.

The above images also give an idea of the different conditions we hiked upon.

Some trail areas were very snowy, others melting snow and icy.

And the worst was very muddy soil that our boots picked up and carried along, making them very heavy.

(Yes, I wish I had taken a picture of our boots at their heaviest, but didn’t think of it at the time.)

The snowy ground made for interesting hiking in some spots.

And also gave us a chance to look for tracks of wildlife that had walked there before us.

In many places we saw deer tracks.

And in one place we saw what we believed to be Wild Turkey tracks.

That got my hiking partner very excited.

But we only saw small birds in the bushes along the trail, no Wild Turkeys.

Some of the trees and the way the trail passed through a rocky that looked out on to a long distance view reminded us of the Aiken Canyon Trail a bit farther south on Hwy 115.

There was another feature that this Park had the reminded us of the Aiken Canyon Trail.

It and this trail have many signs that described the types of trees we were among and information about the wildlife that one might encounter in the Park.

We both enjoy reading about the wildlife and flora and trees that we are walking among.

So these signs were carefully read and made the hike even more enjoyable.

And yes, I will get better at capturing signs in the future. Still have a learning curve with this new camera when the sun is shining . . .