A letter from a local
River park in front, fourteeners out back.
Buena Vista built its playground right on Main Street: the whitewater park on the Arkansas is a two-minute walk from coffee, with surf waves all summer and Browns Canyon — a national monument's worth of class III — starting just downstream.
The Collegiate Peaks stand west of town like a graduation photo: Yale, Princeton, Harvard, all fourteeners, all day-huntable from bed. Midland Hill's singletrack leaves from the river bridge, and the boulders of Elephant Rock draw climbers to the granite ten minutes up County Road 371.
BV is Salida's younger sibling — smaller, scrappier, closer to the big peaks. In June, when the snowmelt surges and the whole town smells like river, there's nowhere better in Colorado.
— Fitz