The Devil's Causeway

My atlas shows a Point of Interest just south of Steamboat Springs, Colorado. These sites are marked with little red squares and matching text and often lead to interesting road trips. I have heeded the call of many other of these labeled sights, including Independence Rock in Wyoming and Scott's Bluff in Nebraska, so this was worth looking into. The name "Devil's Causeway" had promise, too.

Internet research revealed the Devil's Causeway to be a trail in the Flat Tops Wilderness that narrows to three feet wide with drops of anywhere from a few hundred to a thousand feet on both sides (depending on how scared the estimator was, I guess). Some bloggers reported crossing the bouldery bridge on their hands and knees and kissing the ground on the other side. This sounded like something I had to see.

The Flat Tops Wilderness is the second largest wilderness area in Colorado, so that also seemed worth a trip. I often hike in the Rawah or Mt. Zirkel Wildernesses and find those areas beautiful and generally not too crowded. It was time to explore a little further south.

I bought a topo map and headed out with my favorite hiking partner. The drive took over three hours, since the road west of Yampa turned gravelly and rough, so the day was already warm by the time we got started. There were numerous reservoirs in the area, so there were plenty of cars and campers on the drive, but we only encountered a few other parties of hikers in our first few hours of walking.

We started climbing pretty quickly through some pretty wildflowers and soon came to a viewpoint where we could see our route. The famed causeway lies somewhere along that escarpment. We expected to reach it in a little over 3 miles, bravely cross it, and continue along the plateau before dropping back down into the valley for a 10 mile or so loop.

On the way up, which was hot and more mosquito-filled than I expected for the dryness of the terrain, we passed this skull in a marmoty, rocky area. I think it might be an elk skull. I think someone placed it nicely right by the trail to allow for photographs. I don't think the marmots did it.
I wonder if it was meant as a warning, like pirate's flags. Death to all ye who enter here. I often find bones while hiking, like vertabrae or leg bones or the occasional pelvis. I don't often see skulls, but at least it wasn't human.

So, after a bit of a climb, we reached the top of the escarpment. The trail was very clear and maintained, even though it wasn't completed on my topo map. On one website I read that it may not be included on maps because of the danger. Another great web resource (http://www.summitpost.org/) insisted (in all-capitalized red letters no less) that the crossing should be attempted only in "absolutely dry conditions". The day was dry, with blue skies and only a little breeze. More wind would likely have saved me a few mosquito bites, but might have also knocked me off the cliff, so I won't complain.

As we approached the east side of the causeway, we met a couple with a small beagle. They told us that they were turning around because the dog refused to cross it. Hmm.

The causeway looked like it had two fairly narrow bits with a wider section in the middle. I carefully crossed the first bit, thankful that I had my hiking pole for stability. The boulders gave a weird sensation: because all the rocks were a sort of reddish-grey, the trail blended in with the rock falling away on both sides. It brought to mind the climactic scene from Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, where poor Indy has to take a leap of faith over a canyon in order to reach the Holy Grail. I guess my faith was weak, because my legs did get a little wobbly.

Both my legs and the causeway held, though, and the experience was really cool. Usually hights don't bother me at all, but I think the hype had made me nervous, and, because I was going so slowly and carefully it did seem a bit intimidating. Don't they usually say, "Don't look down!"? Well, I wasn't going to miss the view.

We both made it safely across, and there really wasn't any time when we felt in danger. There weren't even any loose rocks (thankfully). It was a unique trail that was worth the trip to at least see it once. The view of the causeway from the west was even more striking.

After those cliffs of death, the rest of the hike seemed less than exciting. The scenery was very pretty as we hiked a very wide plateau, but lacking in any adrenaline rushes. What we needed was a good bear or cougar encounter, but it was not to be. There's my main man wandering off through the willows towards some other cliffs, in search of some kind of further adventure.

It was hard to believe that the pleasant subalpine meadows we hiked through were on top of 11,000 feet cliffs. Flat Tops Wilderness was well-named, and turned out to be a popular destination for backpacking and fishing. As we decended down into the valley and neared the trailhead, we started to encounter many more people. I'm glad they all hadn't decided to come up to the Causeway with us; it would have lost a lot of its magic if you had to cross it in a queue.