If you’re a hiker and want one of the best two-day get-aways you can get from town (and a nice, romantic one at that), try hiking 9 miles (with 1,933 feet of elevation gain) to Trapper’s Lake from the Devil’s Causeway trailhead at Stillwater Reservoir.
The beauty: you can reserve a cabin with a campfire pit and overnight at Trapper’s Lodge (rebuilt after a fire destroyed it in 2002), complete with restaurant, bar, and showers, meaning all you need to carry is a day pack containing your lunch and rain gear. Then the next day, you can either hike back (adding on a spur across Devil’s Causeway if you desire), or, if you have friends who drove up to meet you, trade off and let them hike back while you drive home. While you’re there, you can fish for native Colorado cutthroat trout, horseback ride, hike some more if your legs are up to it, or rent a canoe or rowboat and head out on the lake.
No matter what you do, you’ll immerse yourself in the beauty of the Flat Tops Wilderness Area, birthplace of our nation’s wilderness preservation movement from when US Forest Service employee Arthur Carhart first visited the area in 1919. (Note: it’s “quiet time” after 10 p.m., which the lodge enforces by turning off the cabins’ electricity.) Info: www.trapperslake.com/cabins
