The Hike I Wasn't Planning to Take

A string of changed plans led me to South Table Mountain and an afternoon of seeing Golden from a completely different perspective.

I wasn't supposed to be on South Table Mountain on this fall Saturday.

My original plan for the day involved colorful aspens and a drive much deeper into the mountains. My wife had suggested I take the morning to go explore and take photos on my own, something I don’t get to do often nowadays. As I was preparring to head out on my adventure, I remembered the oil change I'd been putting off. The last thing I wanted to do was get stuck or have car trouble in the mountains.

Fine. New plan.

After taking care of the car, I decided to try my luck at something closer, Golden Gate Canyon State Park. By the time I arrived, finding somewhere to park had become its own adventure. I eventually stopped at the visitor center and asked the person behind the counter a very simple question: "Is this even worth it?"

“Probably not”, he told me.

At this point, I was burning time and sunlight. I had been away from my family for 2 hours already; I wasn’t far from home, and I was nowhere near what I wanted to be doing. I called my wife and told her that this idea was a bust because of the car. She urged me to try one more time. So, I headed back toward Golden and considered Clear Creek Trail instead. Then I saw the cars.

Another plan down the drain.

That's how an afternoon I'd imagined spending among changing aspens eventually brought me on an adventure that was less crowded and much closer to something familiar: South Table Mountain.

A Different Side of Golden

I'd been to this trailhead before.

South Table Mountain Park is close enough to my office that I've occasionally stopped near it during lunch. I even filmed a few videos for work near the entrance to the trail, but I'd never given myself much time to see where the trails actually went. This was my chance.

That afternoon, time was one thing I had.

I pulled a map from the information station, found Fossil Trail and traced a route toward Lava Loop Overlook. In hindsight, I probably should have checked how far I was about to walk. There are estimates of distance in the map on the trail, but I didn’t look. I just started walking.

South Table Mountain Park sits immediately beside Golden but contains more than 1,400 acres and 16 miles of trails. It's a popular place for hiking, running, and riding, with trails crossing the broad mesa above town. Golden, CO

Knowing that is one thing. Walking into it is another.

It didn't take long before Golden began disappearing behind me.

The Things You Notice When You Aren't in a Hurry

The first thing that stopped me was tiny. Moths and bees were moving between clusters of yellow plants beside the trail. Maybe they're weeds. I'm calling them flowers. Having a small child is helping me to slow down even more than normal and notice the small things, like nature’s natural movement.

I switched to my 70–180mm lens and started trying to photograph them. A few minutes became several. I decided to keep moving down the trail, then I noticed a bird perched above a patch of leaves beginning to turn orange. I stopped again. Slowing down to compose my shot before the bird noticed me and flew away.

This is the reason I sometimes like walking alone with a camera. I'm slow. Sometimes painfully slow. I'll stop because an insect landed somewhere interesting. I'll walk backward because the composition looked better from 20 feet ago. I'll wait for a cloud to move.

Usually, there's somewhere else I need to be, but that afternoon, there wasn't.

I had gone looking for the dramatic yellows Colorado is famous for in the fall. I didn't find them this day.

Instead, the color here was quieter: golden grasses, rusty leaves, yellow flowers, and patches of green spread across an increasingly brown landscape. Nothing like what I had planned to witness and photograph, but still beautiful in its own way.

People in a Very Big Place

As the trail continued, people started appearing in my photographs. Not really as subjects. More like measurements.

I saw a hiker moving across a hillside trail and deliberately kept them small in the frame.

Then I turned around and noticed a cyclist crossing the open landscape in front of me.

I could see just how big this place felt, and the scale of people compared to the environment only exaggerated the grandure behind the lens of my camera.

Jefferson County describes South Table Mountain as offering panoramic mesa-top views while remaining close enough for people to use for hikes, runs, and rides. Jefferson County That proximity became one of the strangest parts of walking it.

I knew where I was. I knew Golden was right there.

But sometimes the landscape told me I was miles away from the convenience of city life.

Turn in the right direction and almost everything built by people disappears.

Dry grass. Low brush. Rocks. Huge stretches of sky.

The occasional person moving through all of it, mostly on a bike.

For a place surrounded by a city, South Table Mountain can make the city feel remarkably far away.

Five Minutes Away

There was one tree I kept photographing.

From one direction, it stood against an enormous blue sky. From another, it seemed to sit alone among the grasses and changing brush. Scenes like this kept messing with my sense of where I was. This didn't feel like a trail I could reach during a lunch break. It felt like I'd driven much farther west.

Then the landscape opened again. This time in the opposite direction. And there, sitting between two large hills, was a view of Denver.

The visibility that afternoon was incredible.

From where I stood, the skyline appeared almost perfectly centered between two hills. Denver looked less like a city spreading across the plains and more like something tucked into a valley.

I've seen the skyline from plenty of places around the metro area.

I'd never seen it quite like this.

The wider view from a different vantage point revealed the illusion.

The city stretched across the horizon. Neighborhoods filled the space between us. The hills framing my first photograph were only one small part of a much larger landscape.

I liked both versions.

One showed what was there.

The other showed what I'd noticed.

Keep Walking

I photograph trails constantly.

It has become one of those habits I don't really think about until I'm editing later.

There's the narrow line through the grass.

The section where dirt gives way to rock.

The curve where you can't quite see what's coming.

I think I photograph them because they make a landscape feel unfinished.

A photograph of an overlook says, Here it is.

A photograph of a trail asks, What's over there?

So I kept following them.

The Overlook

Eventually, I found my answer.

Lava Loop Overlook.

There wasn't a dramatic finish line waiting for me. Just a small wooden sign attached to a rock and an enormous view beyond it.

But I had made it.

South Table Mountain's landscape is part of what makes Golden geographically unusual. The city sits where the plains meet the foothills, with North and South Table Mountains rising on its eastern side and the mountains beginning immediately to the west. Visit Golden regularly highlights the mesas as part of the hiking landscape surrounding town. Golden, CO

Standing there makes that geography easier to understand.

In one direction: Golden and the foothills.

In another: open mesa.

Farther east: Denver.

And beneath my feet, trails connecting all of it.

There was also something else I'd started realizing.

I hadn't had to turn around.

I Had Time to Finish

Normally, that's what gets me.

Time.

When I'm exploring with my family, I'm also a husband and a dad. Someone gets hungry. My daughter needs a nap. Eventually we need to start heading back. I love experiencing Colorado with them, but there's a particular luxury in occasionally being somewhere alone and having no one else's clock to consider.

On South Table Mountain, I could stop. I could photograph a moth. I could wait for a cyclist to move through my frame. I could take another picture of the same tree. I could stand there looking at Denver for absolutely no productive reason. And when I wondered what was farther down the trail, I could go find out.

By the time I returned to my car, I'd walked roughly four miles. My feet were aching. I hadn't intended to walk that far, even if my original plan had worked out. But my first plan hadn't worked. Neither had the second. Or the third.

But for once in a long time, I had enough time to see where the next trail went, and I got to finish the hike.

If You Go

South Table Mountain Park is a Jefferson County Open Space property in Golden with 1,482 acres and 16.1 miles of trails. The park has multiple access points, including Golden Hills Road, Camp George West and Rimrock. Visitors should remain on designated trails; Jefferson County notes that unofficial routes can damage the mesa's ecology or enter areas where public access isn't permitted. Golden, CO

The Lava Loop Trail has a seasonal closure from February 1 through July 31 to protect nesting birds, so anyone planning this particular route should check current Jefferson County trail alerts before heading out. Jefferson County

For this outing, I followed Fossil Trail toward Lava Loop Overlook and ultimately walked approximately four miles. Your mileage will vary depending on your access point and route.

South Table Mountain Park — Jefferson County Open Space

Photographed and written by Larry George II in Golden, Colorado, September 2026.