​by T. Duren Jones
​

For the Love of Pancakes
The concept of pancake-shaped rocks intrigued me; that’s not something you see every day. 
I love pancakes. I will have to admit that I am somewhat traditional—as well as a bit boring, I suppose—about how I love to love them. Just butter and hot maple syrup on top, please, and I’ll be very satisfied. No need to load them with tons of other stuff. Keep it simple. But give me loads: mounds of silver-dollar sized or tall stacks as wide as a dinner plate, I don’t care. And maybe throw some bacon on the side. Yum.

My love for pancakes might explain why I wanted to hike to Pancake Rocks. Now, I knew the natural rock formations would not be made out of real pancakes. Duh! (Not like my delightful trip to Big Rock Candy Mountain, where the rocks really were made of candy.) The concept of pancake-shaped rocks intrigued me; that’s not something you see every day.
Picture
Just add syrup
They really did resemble pancakes. My stomach growled.
The Pancake Rocks Trail (with a bonus side trip to Horsethief Falls) is about an hour up into the mountains from Colorado Springs, midway between the small town of Divide and the historic gold mining (now gambling) community of Cripple Creek. The trailhead is a little tricky to find, as there isn’t even a road sign announcing its start. The research I had done in preparation for the hike described the trail as moderate to strenuous, with an elevation gain of about 1,200 feet to a 10,932 ft. summit. I didn’t find it too difficult, but then I live at 7,200 ft. and had hiked all summer. It’s about a 6.2 mile round trip.

The trail begins steeply from the small parking area next to the closed Little Ike Tunnel. It opens up into a nice valley with rolling hills and beaver ponds. From here I climbed a series of switchbacks through a dense conifer forest. Along the way, visible through the pines, are a series of pancake-like rock formations. If you’d like to try this trail too, do not be fooled: Although picturesque in their own way, these are not the pancakes you are looking for. Keep moving forward to where the forest thins out and the trail clearly ends.

Imagine my delight when I reached my destination and was standing on a big stack of pancakes overlooking a dramatic valley with Cripple Creek to the south and mountain ranges in the background toward the west. The mostly solid rock outcroppings, stacked one on top of the other, had been worn away by centuries of wind and rain. They really did resemble pancakes. My stomach growled.

Now, to be fair, I must mention two things: 1) To my mind, the location could probably have been called “Cow Patty Trail” by the look of the stacked, flat rock shapes that surrounded me, but that wouldn’t have sounded nearly as appealing, and 2) Yes, you could see the pancakes, but they looked like the grotesque and distorted pancakes I used to make my kids on Saturday mornings when they were young. 

Because I was an artist, the young’uns just assumed that my skillet could be a hot canvas, and they would shout out shape requests for animals, trains, bicycles, houses or their names in calligraphy. The best I could usually come up with was a disappointing oblong donut shape or a scary Mickey Mouse head. Hey, pancake batter is a difficult medium to work with. I’d eat the rejects that were too burnt, came off the griddle in pieces or were too gross (no one wants to eat a jellyfish-shaped pancake). With extra butter and maple syrup. I didn’t care what they looked like, just how yummy they tasted.

​More adventures