Few people scout the ridgelines around Boulder looking for fire. But in the foothills of the Elkhorn Mountains, Rawhide Creek lures you up a sun-flecked draw past the outcrops of an ancient subterranean inferno.
Rawhide Trail is not a hike of grand vistas, but a ramble up a wooded gulch, a meadow with a view and the riffle of runoff your constant companion. Though open to motorized travel, Rawhide Trail receives little traffic particularly during the week and holds the potential for solitude even on summer weekends.
Right away there is water. Along the road to the trailhead the chokecherries and willows do little to muffle the trickle of Rawhide Creek. But step over the bridge at the trailhead and the two-track veers away from this watercourse, tracing instead the gulley that feeds it. Round a bend across a second bridge the water carves a curve between stands of aspen and alder. Warm light rises from grassy clearings studded with strawberries and buttercups, or geranium and penstemon as the days grow longer. Then the trunks of Douglas fir lean in. From here, the trail climbs.
