grizzly creek trail

When traveling west through Glenwood Canyon on I-70 there’s an option to take the exit for the Glenwood Canyon bike path. This is same exit for the Grizzly Creek trailhead. The parking lot for the bike path is on the left side (when traveling west), but if you take the connector road under the highway from the bike path parking lot you can get to the Grizzly Creek trailhead parking lot. If you want you can always park in the Glenwood bike path parking lot and then just walk down the path to the trailhead, there’s a connecting path. If you’ve ever seen the river here you might have noticed that there is a crystal clear creek that dumps into the fast moving brown Colorado River. This is Grizzly Creek, and you can follow it up to the trail head. The trail follows the creek up the gulch and hugs the creek in several spots. You are never more than a few yards from the creek, and there are numerous opportunities to walk down and wade in the creek or at least stick your feet in. Beware though, that many parts of the creek are fast moving with small waterfalls. There are also lots of rocks, trees, and branches in the river so I would advise against trying to swim. The water is also VERY cold. If I had to guess I would say it’s in the low 50s. We walked up for a ways and the kids found a place to wade and collect rocks in a shallow spot. I continued up the creek to get photos. The sun was going down and since we were in the middle of a forested gulley it was getting dark quick. I wish we had gotten here sooner because I could have spent a lot more time here. We’ll definitely make it a point to come back here again. I’d rather spend more time here and less time down next to the Colorado river on the bike trail. It’s tough to find, but I would recommend Grizzly Creek trailhead.