Went to Greenland, CO today (find that on your map) to run at Spruce Meadows / Spruce Mountain Open Space. The Meadows portion is mostly single and double track trail through open prairie between Greenland Open Space and Spruce Mountain. As usual, it was windy and quite warm. Anyone needing an early season ultra - Greenland could be your spot. You could get warm and sunny or cold and snow at that time of year - just roll the dice!
Ready to get started, you can see the rolling prairie and the top of Spruce Mountain in the background.
That is Spruce Mountain as seen from about the halfway point of the Meadows trail.
Once on top of Spruce Mountain, there are great views of the Front Range of the Rockies, looking north toward Denver above. Hard to imagine that only 600' of raw elevation change can yield such awesome vistas! With a little over a mile of switchbacks and solid climbing up onto Spruce Mountain, there is a very nice and rolling 2 mile loop on top that has scenic viewpoints in all directions.
On the bottom end of the loop there are great southern views, including Pikes Peak off in the distance in the photo above. Far below, at the end of the valley, the town of Palmer Lake sits nestled in front of Mount Herman.
Coming off the back side of Spruce Mountain, Kathleen is ready for the cruise across the Meadows trail to finish up the run. We got in a great 10 mile run today and soaked up some bluebird sky and bright sunshine - Good Times!
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