I walked out the door of my sister's Denver townhome, walked three blocks through a maze of townhomes, then climbed a rise and picked up a greenway that I could have walked, literally, for days. In a region where the state lottery funds greenspace statewide — $2 billion since 1983 — and is responsible for creating thousands of miles of trail, the High Line Canal Trail remains unique.
The High Line Canal is less into irregation, more into recreation these days.
When I was a kid growing up in Denver the High Line Canal was a place to get in trouble after a good rain. The sluice, opened in 1883 for irrigation, runs 66 miles, starting near Waterton Canyon at the base of the foothills on the southwest side of town and meandering east/northeast through Douglas, Arapahoe and Denver counties before winding up near the Rocky Mountain Arsenal. We climbed the cottonwoods lining its banks, we'd rock flip for crawdads after a rain. The thought never occurred to us to hop on our bikes and take the High Line to the next county.
But it eventually occurred to someone. Today, you can ride the length of the canal. The portions through Denver and Aurora are paved (including a generous screened gravel shoulder; elsewhere — through Highlands Ranch, Chatfield, Cherry Hills, Greenwood Village and other suburbs — it's natural surface. But the entire length is suitable for hiking and cycling and you can ride a horse on most of it. Hiking seems the most popular activity.
Granted, there are more direct greenway and bike routes in metro Denver; a stone's through from where I hiked, a superhighway of greenways runs 40 miles from downtown Denver southeast into the suburbs. And during the last year I lived in Denver, I rode the South Platte Greenway for 17 miles to my job downtown. The High Line, though, is all about play. Walking a stretch that managed to find some remaining horse stables in the heart of Denver, I noticed singletrack mountain bike trail ducking in and out of the largely abandoned canal. The canal took me past a major cemetery housing the most diverse collection of trees in the region, it took me through the backyards of pricey homes. And, of course, there were my old friends, the cottonwoods, one of the best climbing trees around.
I declined to climb, but only because I had less than an hour and I wanted to travel as much of the trail as possible. Next time, though, I'll be 20 feet up into the canopy. And I may even see if any crawdads are home.
