Date with a Dome

“Today’s the day!” I said, as I opened my eyes and smiled. I crawled out of my tent and stretched. I had a date with a dome.

I was car camping on a lower flank of Pikes Peak, my base while I did the last few high-altitude hikes for Base Camp Denver: 101 Hikes Along Colorado’s Front Range (Imbrifex Books, June, 2019). But today was going to be just for me – and not at a very high altitude.

Dome Rock, as viewed from final pitch of “hikers’ route.”
Photo by Pete KJ

I encountered Dome Rock obliquely last May. Like almost everybody else, I’d never heard of it. It sits in one of the largest of Colorado’s over-300 state wildlife areas, gets no advertising, and receives few visitors compared to Mueller State Park next door. The reserve is mostly between 8,000 and 9,500 feet in elevation, making it ideal for spring wandering. But there’s a catch: the central third of its area, containing the namesake mountain, is closed between November 30th and July 16th. For my trip last May I had to settle for a peripheral trail culminating in a distant view of the enticing dome. The hike was enough of a delight to make it into the book, but all summer long I couldn’t get that elusive dome out of my mind. I needed to get there!

Why is it closed half the year? The answer is bighorn sheep, Colorado’s state mammal. Several score inhabit the preserve, where grassy south-facing slopes offer superb habitat. Several hundred more live next door on Pikes Peak, and many travel down to Dome Rock to winter on its sunny outcrops, where they can be on the lookout for coyotes. Bighorns mate in early winter and give birth in May-June, and the area is closed to let them do it in peace. Not that the baby lambs are helpless! After only one day they can climb almost as good as mom.

Bighorn sheep, photographed on Mount Alice, Colorado, in June 2016.
Photo by Pete KJ

It felt wonderful to hike the familiar trail down Fourmile Creek, knowing that after 2.5 miles I wouldn’t be branching off like before, but continuing downstream to the Dome. I arrived at the turnoff point, a giant stone fireplace in the bushes which is all that’s left of an early 1900s hunting lodge where Teddy Roosevelt is rumored to have slept. I kept going. “Maybe I should revise and put this in the book,” I said. Then I came to a stream crossing. And another. And another. I laughed each time, and removed my boots and socks and waded across.

Here I was: on hike #93 of 101, and I hadn’t had to wade a stream until now. I tried to shortcut a fourth crossing, stepping across stones and leaping, and got two dunked feet and a handful of thorns for my efforts. No matter! The Dome was going to remain off-book, and just for me.

It soon arrived, looking as delightful as I remembered. Now I got to watch its full face develop as I wrapped southwest around it through meadows of late-summer flowers. Not another human soul was around, even though it was Saturday.

Dome Rock is a gorgeous example of exfoliation. When its near-uniform granite was up-thrust 65 million years ago, it came covered in thousands of feet of sediment. In almost no time, geologically speaking, the sediment eroded and relieved pressure on the granite, which responded by relaxing toward the unconfined side. As it did it cracked into layers not unlike the skin of an onion. Outer layers fell away.

Pete KJ on top of Dome Rock (timed self-portrait).
Photo by Pete KJ

“I need get to the top,” I said, firming my jaw. I craned my neck. Whenever a mountain looks this forbidding, often there is an easier way around back. Even Half Dome in Yosemite has a hikers route, albeit one with cable handholds. I closed my eyes and remembered my first view, obliquely from the opposite side last spring. It had looked like there was a way.

YES there was a way! First I had to cross the stream a fifth time, and find a faint trail up a ridge to arrive at the saddle I had seen from a distance. This was only about 150 feet beneath the peak of the curved gray massif. What’s more, a class-three fissure went up the rock that was ripe for scrambling – almost as good as a cable handhold!

I’m sure bighorn sheep, with their spongy hooves and pincer toes, look far more graceful than I did as I made my way and stood atop the Dome. Click on the photos to see larger size.

Pete KJ

Pete KJ

Pete KJ began explorations at age three in the wooded ravine that was his backyard in Seattle. He also began a lifelong writing habit. Backyard expanded as Pete stomped all over the Cascades and Olympics as a youth, and headed onward to the Pyrenees, Alps, Himalayas, and Andes. Peace Corps service in Africa cemented his deep desire to always be out in the world, and when he finally sat in a cubicle as a chemical engineer, it was in places like Puerto Rico and India. Long absent from cubicle, he moved on to raise kids, travel the world with them, and write about it (and also write three novels). Career brought Pete to Colorado in the 1990s, its gravity and beauty pulled him back. Pete's "Base Camp Denver: 101 Hikes in Colorado's Front Range" will be published in April, 2019 by Imbrifex Books.

5 thoughts to “Date with a Dome”

  1. I’ve done the Half Dome hike in Yosemite, a couple of times, and so recognize the comparable steepness of the final “pitch” of this hike. But it still makes my hands sweat just a wee bit thinking about doing it solo! Be sure to click on the photos to see the larger version and get a real “feel” for this hike. Great adventure!

  2. The photo of the Dome — looks like an impressionist painting. Very cool. Thanks for sharing this hike with us.

  3. What an amazing big rock to climb, Pete! I like the sheep. I’m looking forward to reading your new book that apparently comes out in 2019. So . . . you started adventuring in the woods at the age of three. I was there, too, of course. I was five. And here we are, five decades later, each living in a wonderful, beautiful land of forests and mountains, you in Colorado and me in Northern California. Those woods seem to have really stuck with us.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

The following GDPR rules must be read and accepted:
This form collects your name, email and content so that we can keep track of the comments placed on the website. For more info check our privacy policy where you will get more info on where, how and why we store your data. Thanks for you cooperation and for making a comment here!