Here be thy evil rocks
The last adventure before business week would took over was a spur of the moment “Find a way to get to the giant rocks above Manitou” hike. I found out that these big towering boulders would be referred to as GOG and MAGOG, which is biblically known as evil. I parked at Jimmy’s house and we decided on a plan of attack. Since we didn’t know if a formal trail existed at the time, we created a “best guess” plan.
So Jimmy, Lindsey and I cut up off up one of the off-shoot trails from the Barr Trail. We scramble up rocks and eventually had to cut across the COG Railway quickly. Immediately, we start bush whacking through brush, jaggerbushes, and scrubby oaks. I had a little too much coffee in the morning and was constantly having stomach convulsions. After about 30 mins, we stumbled on to a well-worn path that led to the bottom of Gog. Gog is a huge boulder that is perched on the top of the valley ridge. From here we could see all of Pike’s Peak and the coming-and-goings of the Cog Railway. The boulder was determined to easily be at least 4 times the size of Jimmy’s house, if not more.
From here, I broke way and explored the paths up to Magog. I met some other hikers that took a completely different route around. I found some rocks to climb which brought me right in the midst of the MaGog Rocks. Here I could watch Jimmy and Lindsey approach and the other hikers wander down.
We all then climbed up to one boulder, I dubbed “death beach”. Here you could lie out like you’re on the beach, but at your feet was a steep cliff. After we explored and scrambled a good while, we headed back down the trail. We came across a large boulder field halfway down. Inside the boulder cave was glacier ice from the winter. Here we scrambled through tunnels of rocks and slid down icy chutes. Eventually, we followed the trail the whole way down and found the real entrance. So we can make the climb a little easier and faster, the next time we do it.
