City: Boulder, CO

Category: Parks & Recreation

Description: There are various options for longer hikes at the NCAR trailhead (see following entry)—including a connection to Bear Canyon and the Mesa Trail. For an interesting longer hike (3.2 miles round-trip), look for the Mallory Cave Trail just south of the NCAR Mesa Trail junction and north of Bear Canyon. Please observe the trail closures, which are allowing revegetation as well as protecting endangered wildlife nesting areas. Mallory Cave is a nesting site for the bats that you may see sweeping over this area at dusk, scooping up a tummyful of insects. This trail weaves through a forest of ponderosa pines, leading to a meadow of yucca and low shrubs. Follow the small trail to a huge lichen-covered boulder at the entrance to a stone “staircase” between the rock slabs. Look for a sign at the fork indicating a left turn for the cave, which has been notoriously hard to find for many hikers. The final approach is a shimmy up a 50-foot, 40-degree-angle rock chimney with plenty of hand- and footholds but challenging nonetheless. The cave is shallow, but the vista is grand. At the age of 18, E. C. Mallory rediscovered this cave, which was known by locals but never recorded. Mallory later graduated from the University of Colorado and worked as a miner and eventually a chemist for the United States Geological Survey. For many years he kept the cave a secret.