More From Deb Acord

Featured image for “Sister Liberty and the Solemnites”
Featured image for “Before and after the Super Bowl”
Featured image for “Along the Colorado Trail, profound change”
Featured image for “An immigrant family’s odyssey and triumph”
Featured image for “On becoming a wild wanderer”
Featured image for “Setting the table for tradition and change”
Featured image for “A 500-mile hike with kids in tow”
Featured image for “Broken, but still a river with a life of its own”

About Deb Acord


Deb Acord is a journalist and author from Woodland Park, Colorado.  For decades, she wrote for The Colorado Springs Gazette, Rocky Mountain News, Denver Post and The Indy. At the Gazette, she was co-creator of Out There, a section devoted to the outdoors of Colorado. She is the author of Colorado Winter and Biking Colorado’s Front Range Superguide and has writtten car trend stories and environmental stories for Popular Mechanics.

Image

Support Rocky Mountain Reader


Rocky Mountain Reader depends on generous contributions from readers to support our operations. Please consider making a donation that you can afford — one-time, monthly or yearly. Donations are tax-deductible.

Newsletter Updates


Subscribing is free! To subscribe, sign up to receive our weekly newsletter that will provide previews and links to upcoming content, literary news items from around Colorado and more.

Briefly Noted


Hiking With Kids Colorado: 52 Great Hikes for Families

Jamie Siebrase
Falcon Guides, 2021
288 pages
Image

Hiking With Kids Colorado: 52 Great Hikes for Families provides a guide for a hike a week within a year, detailing trails suitable each season—including winter—for the entire family. Inspired by son Brian, accompanied by husband Ben and championed by her own nature-loving parents, Colorado-based author Jamie Siebrase birthed this “how to hike with children” book. (See our review of Siebrase’s picture book Tonight! A Bedtime Story here.) Winter hikes include the “Pines to Peaks Loop”, a 1.1-mile lollipop shaped treading trail, easy to access from downtown Boulder, crossing three distinct ecosystems: meadow, ponderosa pine parkland, and forest. Another hike, “Lake Gulch and Inner Canyon Loop,” begins in Castle Rock within Castlewood Canyon State Park. The 2.2-mile hike begins easy and turns moderate, passing through ponderosa pine, Gambel oaks, mountain mahogany, and snowberry along the trail. Near Snowmass Village, “The Rim Trail South to Spiral Point” boasts iconic vistas.  This is a 2.6 mile out-and-back hike that is moderate in difficulty. From the trailhead, hike west through aspen groves. This is a popular snowshoeing trail in winter. Siebrase offers useful details on subjects like trail etiquette and preparedness needs, as well as keeping canine-children leashed. The text is clearly broken down into seasonal hikes offering a variety of difficulty and distance explanations, as well as directions to trailhead locations, a familiar obstacle to the would-be family hiker. Legible trail maps show where to go once arrived and the book is peppered with fun facts. — Shelli Rottschafer