Boulder Skyline Traverse: An Iconic & Diabolical Boulder Hike

I texted my best friend Logan a few days before, in early November to see if he'd be interested in taking on this monstrosity of a hike with me. As long as his schedule is open, Logan is ALWAYS down for an adventure, my fingers were crossed. I got a text back a little later and sure enough, he was IN! I had learned of the Boulder Skyline Traverse a few years back and it sounded intriguing because of its difficulty and because of how iconic hiking and summiting all 5 of Boulder's largest and most notable peaks sounded. I was stoked to finally get to try it!

What is the Boulder Skyline Traverse? It's a hike in Boulder, THE HIKE in Boulder that travels 16 miles via trails, point to point and has hikers climbing the 5 largest peaks just outside of town: South Boulder Peak, Bear Peak, Green Mountain, Flagstaff Mount and Mt Sanitas. All in all, you'll gain around 5,500 ft of elevation. Pretty gnarly!

With it being a point to point, meaning you start in one place and end in another, it made sense for us to drive up from Denver separately. We agreed to start the hike at 5am which meant I was up at 4am to wake up and get in the car and drive the 30 minutes or so to Boulder. We met at the parking lot of Mt Sanitas, where we planned to end the hike. I hopped in Logan's car and we drove to the start, South Mesa Trailhead.

Just after 5am, we started our journey! We were pumped! We had some light layers on and moved quick to warm up. It was going to be a really, really long day so we had packs with snacks, extra water and gatorade, a change of socks and anything else that made us feel prepared. I'm pretty sure Logan forgot a headlamp. You'll want a headlamp since it was dark for the first hour or two. We were making pretty good time and summited South Boulder Peak just after sunrise which was exciting! Even more exciting is that Bear Peak is just a hop, skip and a jump away, we headed back down from South Boulder Peak, crossed the short ridge over to Bear Peak and nabbed our second of the five peaks. Hell yeah! We we're feeling good.

Next up was Green Mountain, we took off and immediately started descending quite a bit. I remember at this point I was telling Logan about my colonoscopy (I have to get them every year and I love them) that I had on Halloween. It was incredible, a few days before the colonoscopy I was at a popup Halloween bar that was giving away the plastic vampire teeth. We agreed that it'd be a genius idea for me to clench the vampire teeth between my buttcheeks for the colonoscopy as a nice little surprise for the doctor who had the pleasure of seeing me that day. It was a major success, the doctor came in after I woke up and was so jazzed about it. Nice!!

After descending a hefty amount, Logan stopped us and noticed that his watch kept nagging him suggesting that we were off route. Surely not. Hmm, double check. Oh shit, yeah, definitely offroute. There was another trail that we sort of missed and it meant that we had to hike all the way back up to Bear Peak to get back on track. Bummer. It was probably my fault really, the butt talk was certainly distracting and I take full ownership of that. Was it still going to be possible? Honestly, we weren't sure but attitudes were good, spirits were still high and we were optimistic. We climbed back up, found the trail that we needed to be on and recalibrated. Off to Green Mountain.

Fast forward, we summited Green Mountain. There were more people here, hanging out, having picnics, enjoying the fresh air. It was getting close to lunch time I think, or at least we were hungry at this point and figured it was a good time to take a sit and eat. There was a super friendly little bird that kept getting really close to us. Eventually it landed on Logan's shoe and then on my shoe and just watched us for a bit. We loved the little guy. There's something about being on these hikes where even little, weird things like that are just the coolest. I'm not sure what it is but it's pretty badass.

Okay, 3 down, 2 to go! We're doing this thing! We keep going and what felt like quite a while later we finally found ourselves at Flagstaff Mountain. This one's kinda weird. There's a bunch of parking lots, it's very accessible, there are lots of people. That's cool, no problem however it's really not very clear as to where the technical summit is as it doesn't feel like a typical mountain where you can clearly see it. There's a bunch of little trails connecting here and there so it took a minute to figure out where the supposed 'high point' was. We think we found it and climbed up onto a large boulder to stand and be sure that we were at the highest possible point. Check!

It was on that boulder where we ran into two other guys that clearly looked like they were on a journey of their own- maybe the same as ours? We chatted them up, sure enough, yes they were also doing the hike and were moving a bit faster than us. We sort of leapfrogged eachother a bit until we eventually got to the trailhead for Mt Sanitas. We ended up doing this hike together which was probably good. We were definitely getting tired at this point and they had warned us that Mt Sanitas had a few false peaks, so it was nice to be mentally prepared for that. Man, this was tough to do at the very end. It just kept going and going and going. Where was the top? Eventually, we started to hear more people and turned a corner and BOOM, there it was! The peak- we were there! LET'S GO!

It was basically sunset at this point and we were wiped. We took some time to relax, take in the views, eat some snacks and rest our legs. We were so freaking close, all we had to was get down back to the parking lot a few miles away. All downhill. I think we were all feeling it and so everyone was a bit quiet at this part, I think mostly antsy to have it totally in the bag and be back to the car. Eventually, we were and I can't remember, but there were probably some celebratory high fives. Neat!

When it was all said and done, we landed at 19.65 miles and 6,950 ft of elevation gain. We sat in a lot of traffic from the CU Boulder football game and eventually met Logan's wife for dinner at the hands down best restaurant in Golden, Sherpa House to chow down on some fantastic Nepalese food. A perfect way to round out the day.

I highly recommend the Boulder Skyline Traverse: you'll be rewarded with some incredible views, a high step count, good time with friends (recommended doing with a friend!), fun memories and a sense of accomplishment.

TIPS:

- Bring a headlamp for the start of the hike (and maybe the end depending on how long it takes)

- Aim to do this in the Fall, when it's not so hot and there's no snow. November worked for us, there was a little snow on the first half, nothing too bad, but any later and this would've been a lot more taxing

- Start from South Boulder Peak, it's the highest in elevation and there's a little bit of scrambling at the top, do this while you're fresh