Henderson's Travel Blog: Montrose & Black Canyon of the Gunnison National Park

The city of Montrose lies nestled in the Uncompahgre River Valley of western Colorado. At slightly over 19,000 souls, the city doesn’t seem like much in the scheme of things; however, after a month in Creede, we find it wonderfully cosmopolitan: It has several large supermarkets, multiple gas stations, a plethora of restaurants, and a Wal«Mart. We spent our first few days here just trying to catch up with civilization. While the Wi-Fi at our RV park isn’t sterling, it is better than we’ve had for some time. It will be nice to post this blog from the comfort of our RV rather than heading off to the phone booth-like cubby we had to use in Creede…it reminded us of the days a decade ago when we had to use pay phones in laundry rooms to get a dialup connection to Earthlink. In those days, the graphics weren’t what they are today, so bandwidth wasn’t such an issue. This park even has cable TV, so for the past several days we have been following the Olympics like almost everyone else on the planet.

After getting our lives reorganized, we decided to start exploring the area in earnest, which was why we decided to come here in the first place. The biggest natural attraction in this region is the Black Canyon of the Gunnison National Park. The feature was set aside as a national monument in 1933, but achieved the national park designation in 1999. The national park occupies 14 miles of the canyon’s 48 total miles. The canyon’s maximum depth is now 2,772’ and has been achieved in the past two million years.

The south rim of the National Park is only fifteen miles from Montrose, so it is an easy drive to the most developed side of the canyon. (Our exploration of the north rim follows this.) At the park’s visitor center, a volunteer astronomer had a telescope set up with filters on it so we could view the sun. The big red ball of molten hydrogen was putting off some pretty interesting solar flares. We are always pleasantly surprised when we visit one of our national parks.

In addition to a visitors’ center, the South Rim Drive takes visitors for several miles along the rim of the canyon. There are approximately ten pullouts that offer opportunities for sightseers to get out of their chariots and actually walk to the rim of the canyon for breath-taking views into the abyss and down to the river itself. These hikes range from a few hundred feet to about a mile. We took most of them since they each offer a slightly unique vista of the canyon. The natural rock of the canyon is quite dark, nearly black (and along with the canyon’s depth and lack of sunlight, this is where it gets its name), but is laced with lighter colored ribbons of rock. These ribbons--called pegmatite dikes--were molten volcanic material that was forced up through cracks and fissures in the prevailing rock to produce the “painted” effect on the walls of the gorge. Quite interesting is the fact that the north rim wall is much steeper and more vertical than the south rim walls. That is because north facing slopes retain moisture better and, therefore, erode quicker and more deeply than do dryer south facing slopes. So fascinating and popular are these geologic features that we shared the visitor center with six vans full of University of Kansas Geology students who were on a two week field trip with their professors. How fun!

In the early 1990s, we once tent-camped--in the pouring rain--at the East Portal of the Gunnison Diversion Tunnel located down on the river at the east end of the park. Twenty years later we revisited that locale and reminisced about our time there, but we didn’t pine away for days gone by. It turned out that we only had vague recollections of our few days there as we were mostly cooped up in our tent. The amazing thing about the water diversion tunnel is that the 5.8 mile tunnel was constructed between 1905 and 1909 to divert irrigation water to the Uncompahgre Valley. It literally turned the desert-like valley into an agricultural oasis. The tunnel still operates with much of the original equipment today.

Other than the geology students, the only wildlife spotted on this trip was a huge raven guarding one of the overlooks. It wasn’t quite an Edgar Allen Poe moment, but for western Colorado it was pretty close.

Our first look at the canyon

Gunnison River - Notice the gentler north-facing slope

"Nevermore...."

Hang on tight, it's a long way down

Pegmatites

"I've got sunshine...."

Crystal Dam

The exploration of the north rim of the Black Canyon National Monument encompasses a significantly greater commitment of time than does a south rim visit. That is because instead of an easy 15 mile drive from Montrose to the south rim, a north rim visit requires a considerable drive. There are actually two approaches to the north rim from Montrose and each requires a drive of some 85+ miles one way, or one can turn it into a loop, which is what we did. A portion of the loop is a scenic drive known as the West Elk Loop. Essentially, we took the west leg of that loop from Blue Mesa Dam to Hotchkiss, with a side trip to the national park. Blue Mesa Dam is one of three dams in the Black Canyon. Blue Mesa creates the largest water storage reservoir in the state and the Marrow Point and Crystal Dams are also hydro-electric dams that help control water flow through the canyon.

Except for the 11 miles from Crawford to the park, which is gravel, the portion of the loop we took was a fairly nicely paved road. In other words, a trip anyone could do in a car. This is high desert, ranging in altitude of 8,000’ or so down to about 6,000’. This is not the country of soaring fourteeners and thirteeners that we experienced in July, but, rather, well-worn and rounded terrain sculpted by volcanos and water--not volcanos and glaciers. Interestingly, in a land carved by water, it is undergoing a significant drought and there are reservoirs here that are completely dry along with hay fields that should be ready for a second cutting barely showing any life at all.

The most distinctive thing about the north rim is its primitiveness; the views where just as spectacular, but the overlooks were much less crowded. As we mentioned, the road in is gravel and all of the roads in the area are gravel. The overlooks on the scenic drive are less developed and less peopled. The unmanned visitors’ center works on an honor system for fee collection, registration for river level hikes, and for backcountry permits. There are no fancy displays and the volunteer astronomer was nowhere to be found. The restroom was a co-ed one-holer a short walk away from the center. What was there not to love!