Hike at Deer Creek Canyon Park (Level 7)

Friday around noon (just before the storms rolled in) I checked out a spot I had never hiked before in Deer Creek Canyon Park, located just west of Ken Caryl Valley area. This spot is less than a 10 minute drive from 470/Ken Caryl in West Littleton. Since I do most of my hiking with kids, and sometimes even Grandma, I rate my hikes based on easy (1) to challenging (10) for us a s group. This one was definitely on the challenging end of the scale due to the duration of the hike and the vertical terrain. If you look at the map below we hiked the Plymouth Creek Trail out and Meadowlark Trail back to the lot for a total of 2.6 miles/2+ hours! I hiked this trail with my 7 & 11 year old boys and Grandma. Plymouth Creek Trail was a lot of rocky vertical terrain. Meadowlark Trail was more level and mostly down hill, a welcomed change.

There are many trails here that allow bikes. Be aware of this if you are walking the trails as they come down pretty fast! I highly recommend going earlier in the day to avoid afternoon storms. When we were there last Friday we were just about 1/2 way through our hike (about 1:00) and I received a Flash Flood Warning for the Ken Caryl area on my phone! Glad the second half was down hill. Our hike ended about 2:00 and by the time I was home (20 min later) it was raining, thunder and lightning! It would have been very scary to be on the hike during that storm. I highly recommend this hike for families with older kiddos. As I said this was a bit much for my 7 year old. I ended up piggy backing my my 7 year old a few time towards the end. We had some cloud cover which was nice, I can imagine this hike could be very hot later on in the summer.

The views were amazing and it was an easy hike for my 11 year old.

You can see from the pictures that at the beginning of our hike it was beautiful and sunny. By the end there was cloud cover and thunder! Be prepared! Check the weather and bring a map. Maps are available at the parking lot and trail entry point. Here is the park link for more info: https://www.jeffco.us/1208/Deer-Creek-Canyon-Park