I generally keep my hikes to Park County trails and mountains. Even after completing more than 160 hikes since the spring of 2006, I find there are plenty of places in the county I haven’t visited. Still, I can be distracted when Pete suggests an intriguing hike not far beyond the county line.
From my house in northeast Park County, I look down the valley east-southeast and see prominent summits south of Pine Grove: Green Mountain, Devil’s Head and Long Scraggy Peak. Long Scraggy’s name is a no-brainer; it’s a long, narrow mountain with many prominent rocky outcroppings – “scrags,” I suppose you’d call them.
We started our trek at the road that used to be the entrance to Top of the World Campground, a place that had fantastic views, as its name implies, until one of the Buffalo Creek area fires in the early 2000s turned the area into a desert. The road is 11.4 miles down Jefferson County Road 126 from Pine Junction on U.S. Highway 285, and near the top of the long hill south of Buffalo Creek, on the east side of the road. There’s a locked gate across the road, and a sign that says, “Road Closed.”
