Driving through Golden to get over to the trailhead, with Castle Rock on the left:
Of course once I got there, the sun was behind clouds. Ah, well.
The trail signage on the west side is lacking. Not sure if that's a matter of jurisdiction, or what, but you can easily stray onto private property on the north side. In fact, I was surprised to find that even Castle Rock is on private property, since almost everyone I see in this area is on top of it. I ended up exiting out onto a road in the middle of the mountain by passing a "Trail Closed" marker. Who the hell can tell? Basically, to stay in public open space, you can only turn right once you pass through the cliffs.
Castle Rock is such a landmark, I hope the county acquires this land (since there are really no privately-run, publicly-accessible parks to speak of). I'd pay for some for it.
Clockwise from left: North Table Mountain (a trail is barely discernible), the Flatirons in Boulder, the sunlit surface of Rocky Flats:
Mount Tom, just this side of Golden Gate Canyon State Park:
Part of Green Mountain in Lakewood:
Downtown Denver:
The sun shone through this gap for a few minutes before disappearing:
Deer waiting to see what I'm going to do:
It turns out that was a road to nowhere, so I turned back around.
Just before descending through the cliffs:
Below is Castle Rock during the final descent. There was a college-age girl in a yellow fluorescent top heading up as I came down. At least I could see her.
Distance was 9.09 miles, time 2:31 (moving 1:46), elevation gain/loss 1,039 feet, avg. pace 16:40 (moving 11:40), and best pace 7:02.
I was in even less of a hurry on parts of this run than I usually am, mainly when the sun came out. However, it was pretty chilly on top in the wind, so I did spend some good chunks of time actually moving to keep warm. I felt the need to push against the fatigue of the prior day's run, but was still dragging towards the end.
