Garden of the Gods: Scramble Trails & Ridge Circuit

Garden of the Gods is a 1,347-acre city park in Colorado Springs containing 300-foot Jurassic sandstone fins, ridges, and balanced rocks formed when the horizontal Fountain Formation was pushed vertical by the same Laramide uplift that created Pikes Peak. The rock's red color comes from iron oxide in the Permian sediments; the formations are up to 300 million years old and were pushed from horizontal to near-vertical by the Front Range uplift 65 million years ago. The park has 15 miles of trail ranging from flat paved paths to technical ridge scrambles; the active circuit uses the Ute and Siamese Twins Trails to traverse the full ridgeline, traverse between the major formations, and reach the Siamese Twins viewpoint — a double-arch opening that frames Pikes Peak (14,115 feet) perfectly in its gap. Red Rock Canyon Open Space adjacent to the south adds a full morning of additional sandstone scrambling.