Segment 1: A Clean Break & The CT's Canyon On-Ramp
2025 SoBo Colorado Trail Report ft. Hostel Fish (Denver, CO), Waterton Canyon Trailhead, & the rocky singletrack into Bear Creek country.
[ Day #: 1 | Total Miles Hiked: 0 | Miles Remaining: 491 ]
It’s August 12th, 2025.
Waking up at 3:30am in a hostel — and respectfully extracting oneself from a full dorm room without waking a soul — is an artform I am just beginning to hone. Thankfully, my anxious mind gets the best of me, and I wake up a few minutes before my alarm is set to go off. I peel up from the bottom bunk bed and grab a black laptop bag from the darkness before quietly heading out the door.
I find a mustard-colored couch to post up on in one of the community spaces and take a moment to collect my thoughts, which are already racing.
The light fixtures nearby hang like glowing orbs, scattering shadows in circles around the room. The walls are scarred with peeling plaster and exposed brick, but instead of looking ruined, it feels intentional, like the space has earned its grit. A giant mandala tapestry bursts across the back wall, radiating like a compass for wandering minds.
This is Ophelia’s Electric Soapbox & Hostel Fish, a late Victorian-era landmark nestled in the heart of Denver’s Ballpark District, whose history is as diverse as its guests. While the upper two floors have rotated between hotel, hostel, and boarding room, the street level has housed saloons, a beer bottling plant, and even an adult bookstore. After facing condemnation from the city in 2011, it was reconstructed, and now plays host to a restaurant, bar and music venue in its current life cycle.
Needless to say, Hostel Fish has seen countless adventures at their beginning, middle, and end. Mine is no exception. I’m about to embark on the Colorado Trail (CT), a 491-mile pilgrimage from Denver to Durango (if southbound taking Collegiate West). But before I do, I need to let go of something that’s been holding me back, and I need to do it exactly as instructed.
New here? Start with my Denver prologue:
The Quiet Violence of Logging Off
I open my laptop to the Notion itinerary I wrote myself nearly a month ago. It’s titled “Exit Plan”. The description reads:
Objective: Leave clean. No access. No accountability. No retaliation.
Deadline: All tasks must be completed in the middle of the night on Aug. 11th.
What follows is a five-phase, 8,000-word offboarding playbook for ending a contract that has been chafing away at my core values and monopolizing my time for the last five years. If a single step is done out of sequence, the entire house of cards falls down, and I have failed my objective. It’s a task list that requires my undivided attention, and it needs to be completed before 8 a.m. EST, which is two hours ahead of mountain time.
I get to work, periodically grateful for the lengths I went to in order to make this chore easier on myself. I’d planned to walk from this contract for months, and probably should have done so years ago, but not once throughout planning did I anticipate I would be so alert and ready to deploy the day of.
One might think, ‘This amount of preparation and stealth is a bit overkill, no?’ and, for the record, I would agree, if circumstances weren’t that which they are. Someday soon (in a much longer blog), I will tell the story of those circumstances and how they led to this point. For now, I implore anyone reading to believe me when I say: not only was it the right choice, I should have been stricter, as it was later revealed. Always triple-check the locks. You never know the lengths people will go.
Without the added disturbance of shaky hands or scattered fits of uncertainty to accompany me, I am distracted only by the creaking hardwood floors and occasional bouts of early morning, coffee-related activity coming from the hostel’s nearby kitchen. I finish ahead of schedule, practically twiddling my thumbs, until a wave of emotion overcomes me: I have just quit the contract that has been degrading my self-worth, confidence, and potential since pre-Covid times. I silently thank the me from three months ago that made this celebratory moment possible; she was brave, and she believed that patience and grit could get us there. She was right.
A couple happy tears later, I refill my coffee cup and grab my Osprey Aura AG 50-liter pack from the dorm room; it’s now 7:30 a.m. MST, and I want to hit the post office around 9 a.m. before I head to Union Station. Prior to officially hitting the trail, I figure it’s a good idea go through everything in my pack one last time and make sure it’s in solid condition. This includes bottles/filters (o-rings? first water source? caps?), clothing, ditty bag, tent (poles? stakes? patch kit?), sleep system, trekking poles, hygiene items, food, and anything attached to the pack are all accounted for, and that all devices relying on battery are charged up and ready to go.
I am practically bursting at the seams with excitement at this point. Headphones in, music on, with today’s real mission coming into focus, I am dancing and singing and having a good time as I rummage around in the contents of my pack. It takes a good amount of time to organize the food; it’s been stashed in every pocket and crevice possible. I have the idea to take some of the snacks out of their original packaging and into Ziploc bags (lighter, by a gram), which I then store in gallon-size “smell-proof” bags. I pray that they work, because I don’t have a bear can.
Before I leave, I decide to down one last cup of coffee, and meet a curious gentleman named Jeff mixing his own brew from a Ziploc bag full of instant espresso. He notices the pack slung haphazardly around me, and we get to talking about the CT.
Jeff has just gotten off trail, and though cheery in disposition, the story he shares is one of caution and consequence. After forty years as a smoker, at 12,000 feet, his lungs tapped out; while he was able to turn back with his dignity still intact, he also brought back with him a lesson to share: take the trail seriously if you want to finish. Start slower than your ego wants. Eat early, drink more than you think, respect the weather, and respect your lungs.
“The mountains aren’t for everybody,” Jeff muses, sipping his coffee. I pocket his warning like a talisman, and resolve to not do anything to impede my own progress from hereon out — I’ll be darned if anything stands in the way of me seeing this entire journey through.
So Long & Thanks for All the (Hostel) Fish
I descend the wide wooden stairs of the Airedale building’s entryway and exit onto the busy streets of downtown Denver, banking a left for the U.S. Post Office.
Once there, I scan my options and select an extra-large self-sealing envelope to house my laptop in on its way back “home”, or at least where my family and dog are currently located. It barely fits, and I have to beg the postal worker to stick an extra piece of tape on there, but eventually my final work-related task is complete, and I won’t personally touch a professional project (outside of checking in with my virtual assistant) for another month and a half.
Denver’s public transit system, aka the RTD, is fantastic.
It’s clean, on time, and efficient, but the rail system can also be a little confusing to out-of-towners. Thankfully, a punk-rock local saw me scratching my head as I stared at the spider map from Union Station and offered to help point me in the right direction. The RTD gets you within 9 miles of the Waterton Canyon Trailhead; you’ll want to take the D Line light rail to Littleton-Mineral Station, then grab a rideshare, hitch, or arrange for a trail angel to pick you up from there and drop you off at 11300 Waterton Rd, Littleton, CO 80125 (the beginning of the CT going southbound, Segment 1).
I take my first (and last) Uber in Colorado at this juncture, knowing it’ll put me at the trailhead close to noon. This leaves me only 7-8 good hours of hiking time for the rest of the day, and Waterton Canyon is known to be a particularly hot, unshaded walk on a dirt road for the first 6.7 miles.
Two nice ladies momentarily suspend their walk to take my picture by the trailhead sign, and one — the mother of a newborn, present in his covered stroller — shares aspirations to do the trail one day. I tell her something like, “Once your son is a little more grown up, I think you two should do it together,” and she agrees vehemently.
I like to think about them, 12-15 years from now, heading into the 1.7 billion-year-old metamorphic rocks this canyon was carved out of, like so many before them. Like me.
This section of the Colorado Trail is arguably the busiest, but the dirt road that follows the South Platte River all the way to Strontia Springs Dam is vast, with plenty of room for traffic to flow. I walk for a little while, wondering what to do with all the nervous energy coursing through me. There are immediately gratifying views of the river along the way, and so naturally, that’s where my mind begins to wander.
If you’re enjoying this, fuel the next long trail—coffee now = miles later.
I take a break at Black Bear Rest Area, which is only 1.9 miles into the trail.
I want to get into the water; it had done a great job enticing me, and there is a sheltered picnic table and a pit toilet nearby I could use to change into my bathing suit. I wrestle my bathing suit out of the roll-top bag in my pack — neon orange swim bottoms paired with a blue Reebok sports bra — and go to change, leaving everything to my name on the table.
As I emerge, I notice a tall, looming figure through the trees flanking the river to the left, and realize someone has already had the same idea. This is where I meet Bogdan, an international traveler from Poland. He has a pair of bright red swim trunks on over massive, tree-trunk limbs, and he wears a brilliant smile, despite missing one or two teeth. Our conversation is polite, though at times, cut short due to language barriers.
The water is unbelievably frigid; it’s 87° F and the sun is shining, but the water is closer to 50°. I perch on a rock and dip my feet in awkwardly, thinking back to the last time I was in Colorado: October of last year. At Cottonwood Hot Springs near Buena Vista, Arlo and I did this thing called the “lymphatic reset”, which I write about at length here. Cottonwood Hot Springs allows patrons access to Cottonwood Creek via a small path out back; from here, you can scale a metal ladder down to the manmade stone vestibule that sits inside of rushing, white-capped waterflow (37° F). The lymphatic reset is achieved by cycling between this icy water and any one of their hot springs, a few minutes each, and with eleven cycles. Each.
By switching between both the hot springs and cold, rushing waters accessible there to guests, you’ll not only release a bundle of heat shock proteins in your body (which play a crucial role in cellular repair and protection) but also reset your lymphatic system (which removes waste and toxins from the body). Some people may also find acupuncture helpful for managing altitude sickness symptoms, though research is limited.
— Now Is Not the Time to Be Freda Heights (Oct. 30, 2024)
How is it that I was able to do eleven sessions in the cold river plunge at Cottonwood Hot Springs, but I’m not even able to sit down in 6 inches of the South Platte River? As I’m contemplating this, I see someone booking it across the dirt road path, about 50 yards away. The silhouette of a large backpack, along with the sun hoodie pulled taught around a nylon visor and sunglasses, serves to communicate his current mission. Nonetheless, I wave at him and call out, “Hey, are you thru-hiking?”
“Yeah.” He responds, a cool smile on his lips. “Are… are you?” He cocks his head inquisitively, his trekking poles coming to a pause.
“Oh, yeah. I just…” I look down, realizing how I must appear to him. It’s funny; I hadn’t considered taking a break at mile 2 to be lazy until this very moment. “I just really wanted to get in the water. It’s cold, though. I wouldn’t recommend.” I smile back, and we chat for a little longer. He tells me his trail name is Llama, and that he’s done the PCT. Before too long, he’s back on his way down the dirt road path.
As he disappears into the canyon, I resolve to get back to it as well, and hobble over slick river stones to the bank of South Platte. I almost eat it here, trying to scramble back up the rocks with my wet feet and hands, but Bogdan saves me by planting a sturdy hand on my butt, for stabilization of course (lol).
The Long Corridor Out of Denver’s Noise
Waterton Canyon isn’t a wilderness sprint so much as a long on-ramp to the mountains, and it seems the entire Front Range comes here to stretch their legs. There are cyclists dinging past day-packers, Denver Water Board vehicles crawling around the bend, and the occasional large group of schoolchildren being led across the broad gravel road. Perhaps this is why it surprises me so to see a tide of bighorn, twenty strong, pouring off the sun-blasted rock to browse the verge. Ewes with lambs and a few yearlings drop their heads and go to work, snipping tawny roadside grasses and forbs and nosing the salty crust at the road’s edge. A sweet woman beside me wears the same stunned grin I have; we whisper guesses — sheep? goats? shoats? — and vote ourselves into a tie until later, when a ranger board and a quick search confirm the obvious: Rocky Mountain bighorn sheep, the canyon’s resident herd.
For a few minutes the whole road holds its breath. Hikers pause mid-stride, bikes coast to a stop, phones come up. One lamb trots across the track behind three walkers, and they back up instinctively, providing as much space as possible. We are guests here, in a living, thriving corridor these beautiful creatures call home.
Enchanted by this encounter, I carry on, and eventually the trail leaves the river where the concrete dam is located. An even wilder, more rugged portion of Platte Canyon is drowned beneath 243 of water just beyond those walls, as Andrea Lani points out in her CT memoir Uphill Both Ways. The road ends, the river hushes, and the Colorado Trail stops pretending it’s a stroll; singletrack peels up from the water into gambel oak and ponderosa, heat bouncing off granite, switchbacks stacking like ribs. It’s the first true climb, and the hike finally feels like it’s begun.
Ahead: Ram v. hiker standoff, mentors of the trail, and my first trail meltdown (literally)…
I’m exploring partners for the next long trail.
If a brand/mission you love fits this work, please share this post or DM me.
If you found me via the CT groups or channels (FB/Reddit/IG/YouTube/TikTok), this one’s for you. Take 25% off and get the full Colorado Trail series, planning deep-dives, honest gear notes, and updates as I prep the next long trail. Subscribe to follow along, support the next route, and snag a limited-time discount:
Thanks for reading and for sharing trail stoke! Follow socials: @freda.heights on Instagram/TikTok—trail clips are rolling out as I catch up post-trip.
Heads up: fredaheights.com is migrating to typetwofun.com soon; the blog will have a proper home there.
This is Michigan Pathways,how’s the trail life going?