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!

Morrow Point Reservoir

East end of Black Canyon

North Rim Overview



We love the twisty roads - a throwback to our Harley days

Pegmatites from the North Rim

Amazing Rock Wall

Bristol Head Peak, Squaw Creek, & Last Thoughts on Creede

Back in the late 1800s, a homesick Brit named a prominent mountain peak near here Bristol Head—apparently it reminded him of some geologic feature in Blighty.  In the 1900s, the US Forest Service placed a radio tower and some small buildings containing electronic equipment at the 12,730’ summit.  Hence, a fifteen-mile four wheel drive road is there for those who are up to a couple of hours’ ride on a body-jarring rocky donkey path.  Well, that’s what Jeepers do, and we did, too.  Amazingly, this road passes through an area known as Ouray Park.  It is a large, beautiful, open meadow-like feature that runs for many miles at a very high altitude.  There are many of these features in this region.  They are a striking anomaly to the rugged peaks that are more typical.

Bristol Head Peak - 12,730 ft

Lovely Road to Bristol Head

Ouray Park

One is rewarded with stunning views in every direction after reaching the summit of Bristol Head, even though the road is long and arduous.  It is a fairly popular drive; we had as many as two other vehicles up on top with us, plus we met several others coming and going.  We didn’t remain on top for our lunch as we had planned because the ubiquitous afternoon thunderstorms began in late morning, and we were concerned with lightning.  Anytime one is above timberline, the risk of lightning strikes in a storm is quite high.

View from the top looking west

View from the top looking southwest

Our Jeep and the Forest Service Radio Tower

Art is where you find it

Storm threat in the west

Therefore, we decided to seek lower ground for our noontime respite.  On our way to Bristol Head, we saw a turnoff to Crystal Lake, and so we decided to travel the couple of miles to have our lunch there.  It was worth the side trip and was a perfect place for lunch.  We even dodged the rain.  However, even though it is only late July, we saw a snow covered ridge not too far above our luncheon spot.  In truth, it could have been hail, but we’ll never know for sure.  Snow in July at these altitudes is not uncommon—we saw it often when we lived near Leadville.

New snow in July or is it hail?

This visit has been replete with wildlife.  There was the bear we mentioned in our Alpine Loop Blog, the bull moose near Slumgullion Pass, and we have had numerous sightings of mule deer—usually does and their fawns.  On the Bristol Head trip we were fortunate to spot a couple of bucks—one just a spike, but the other had several points.  The elusive elk have remained so.

Buck Mule Deer

Our last hike of the month turned out to be a surprise. Actually two surprises.  Our first choice was a hike up Ute Creek.  We knew it required a river crossing, but we’ve rock-hopped many times before and thought nothing of it.  As it turned out, the river crossing required quite a long wade through a swift waist-deep Rio Grande River.  We decided to pass.

 As we have mentioned previously, most of the hikes in this region are fairly vertical—the other common feature is that they require quite a long road trip to get to them.  Squaw Creek Trail, which we took as second choice for our finale, required a thirty mile drive from our RV to the trailhead.  The second surprise came when the ascent proved to be much more gradual than those to which we have become accustomed--even though the trail in almost entirely in the Weminuche Wilderness.  We followed Big Squaw Creek up from its convergence with the Rio Grande River to near its source.  The creek was running full and clear for late July and offered the weary hiker a pleasant respite from the dusty trail.  The drainage was largely gentle and ran for several miles, slowly gaining altitude; it didn’t have the extreme vertical climbs as many of our other hikes.  We bailed out before the last mile up to the summit of Squaw Pass (we got a late start, so time as well as energy took precedence) or we might be writing a different story.  At the end of this hike, we spotted three mule deer along and in a broad, calm section of the Rio Grande River near our trailhead (in the last photo below try to spot the third deer—we promise that she is there).

Big Squaw Creek

Looking south up Squaw Creek drainage

Deeper into the Squaw Creek drainage

View north--heading back to the trailhead

Three Mule Deer

Creede is the only town in Mineral County, and its population swells from 450 or so full-timers to about 10,000 in the summer.  Obviously, it is crowded and the few restaurants and the only gas station present the visitor with perpetual lines.  We’ve had little luck in finding a good meal in town.  We did have a couple of great meals at Antlers Lodge north of town on the river.  Our neighbors told us about a small place in town that offers gourmet meals at only a few tables, so last night we ventured out to Far Dog to see what they had to offer.  We were baffled by the name of the place and still are.  Initially, we thought it might be a play on words, in that in Texan speak “far” can mean distance or it can mean fire.  Hence, Far Dog could be Fire Dog (a Dalmatian) or, perhaps that dog over there…well, maybe not.  Anyway, we still don’t understand the significance of the name, but the meals we had were scrumptious.  The place probably seats 15 or so and the demand for a table was high; we stood out in the rain for a bit to make sure we got a table—it’s amazing what people will put up with to catch a good meal.

Creede has been interesting.  We love the scenery in this region of the Rocky Mountains.  Every outing, whether in the Jeep or afoot, has been a delight--this in spite of the fact that most of the spruce forest here has been devastated by a serious infestation of a spruce beetle.  The saving grace is that there has already begun a renewal of new growth; although it is unlikely that we shall live long enough to fully enjoy it.

Notice the new tree growth among the dead ones

While Creede is a wonderland of glorious scenery, it is a technological wasteland.  As the rest of the country is zooming along on the information highway, Creede is bumping down a washboard gravel cart path.  Like most Americans, we have become addicted to electronic gadgets, particularly computers and the Internet.  It has been a frustrating month for us.  We can take or leave TV, but take the Internet away from us and we feel lost.  It always hasn’t been so.  There was a time in the 1990s when were content to live at 10,000’ with no electronic communications of any kind—of course, much of that time was before the World Wide Web.  Soon we will be relocating to Montrose and perhaps our Internet access will improve and we will be once again content.  We’ll revisit you from there—Olathe corn should be in the farmers’ markets by then.

Mark Twain, Snow Mesa, & Rodents for Lunch

Mark Twain has always been one of our favorite authors.  The Creede Repertory Theatre, which we have mentioned earlier in this blog, is producing Is He Dead?, a play that he wrote in Europe in the late 1890s.  It was never performed until just recently.  It’s ironic that perhaps his funniest play took 100 years to be produced.  We attended CRT’s earlier production of Mrs. Manners, which we thoroughly enjoyed.  Although we expected a good show Tuesday night, we were blown away!  We were members of the Denver Center Theatre Company for many years when we lived in Denver, yet we have never seen a better performance than the one we saw Tuesday night.  It was so funny our faces hurt from laughing.  We aren’t amused by trifles.  When we exited the theatre, the entire cast was lined up out on the sidewalk to greet the audience.  What a top notch finish to a really fun evening of entertainment.  CRT is taking Is He Dead? on the road to the Arvada Center in October.  If you live on the Front Range of Colorado, you should make this play a priority—we promise that you will be thoroughly entertained and will have one of the best laughs you have had in a long time.

Most of the hiking trails in this region are nearly vertical.  Wednesday’s outing was no exception.  We like the Colorado Trail and the Continental Divide Trail, and here they are combined for long stretches.  We decided to resume our exploration of the east side of Spring Creek Pass with a trek up to Snow Mesa (we blogged earlier about our experiences on San Luis Pass several miles east of this hike).  Spring Creek Pass is about 10,900’ and Snow Mesa is about 12,300’+/-; that’s approximately 1,400’ over two or so miles.  Going up was a grind as the trail never leveled off for a breather or a stop for morning tea for the first mile and a half.  The most interesting thing about the hike up other than the views was the prevalence of exceeding large cairns.  They are usually just small piles of rocks used to mark a faint trail, but these babies were huge.  Above timberline, the trail entered and followed a large talus slope all the way to the top of Snow Mesa.  Actually it was more of a talus mountain than a slope.

A Very Large Cairn

A Mega Cairn 

Talus Slope Trail

However, once we were clear of the tree line, the views to the west and northwest were spectacular.  On top of Snow Mesa, where tundra prevails, we had 360° views of the San Juan Mountains and the  Weminuche, La Garita, and the Uncompahgre Wilderness areas, including the previously blogged about Alpine Loop.  We could easily see a cluster of five fourteeners: Uncompahgre Peak, Wetterhorn Mtn., Handies Peak, Redcloud Peak, and Sunshine Peak to the west and one, San Luis Peak, to the east.  In every direction there were more thirteeners than you could count or name.  Had the wind not been so vigorous and cold on Snow Mesa, we could have stayed up there for hours just soaking in the views.  Instead, we retreated downhill for lunch among the rocks only to be scolded by pikas, marmots, and other rodent denizens of the talus region.

Uncompahgre Peak & Wetterhorn Mtn

On Top of Snow Mesa

Downward Bound

Our trip down was largely uneventful except for being caught and passed by four young backpackers.  The first two caught up with us just after we finished lunch when we were almost back to the tree line.  They were descending rapidly and clearly had more confidence in their ankle strength on the rocky trail than we did.  Several minutes later a third young man passed us; he was going slower than his companions and took the time to wish us a great day.  Nearly ten minutes later the final person in that group arrived.  He was much slower than the others, yet laughed about it when we teased him about being a slowpoke.  It turned out that they were hiking all the way from west of Denver to Durango on the Colorado Trail and had been out 21 days.  He said the other fellows were just 16 & 17, and as the old man at 21, he had a hard time keeping up with them, especially going downhill—that was a true statement as we had seen them together as they started down from Snow Mesa.  Imagine being the “old man” at 21.  Biologically, we could easily have been their grandparents:  Makes one feel pretty good to be joining them out on the trail—even if it were for just a day at a time rather than weeks at a time.

Our View from our Lunch Stop

Mountain Byways & Volcanic Debris

Prior to the mid-nineteenth century’s massive expression of Manifest Destiny and the mineral extraction craze that plagued the western United States, the Ute Indians occupied all of what is now Colorado and spilled over into Wyoming, New Mexico, and Utah.  The people of the Shining Mountains (as they called the Rockies) were a semi-nomadic people who were content to live off the land and own none of it.  Mountain men and other intrepid explorers had made forays into the Colorado Rockies prior to the Civil War, but the biggest push began shortly after its end.  The devastation in much of the South and other regions of the newly-reconstructed country helped encourage a large migration of people west.  They all weren’t sod-busters in Conestoga wagons; the most aggressive were the mineral extractors.   A number of gold strikes in southwestern Colorado created a frenzy of activity.  Prospectors crawled over the high mountain passes that previously served the Utes as passages from winter to summer hunting and living areas.  When strikes were made, the prospectors widened the old Indian trails to handle wagons to carry ore and, later, built toll roads and railroads for the same purpose.

American Basin

The Rockies are riddled with these old routes.  Most have been long abandoned; others thrive as playgrounds for Jeepers and ATV enthusiasts.  Where we are located, near the heart of major mineral finds, there are countless four wheel roads (that’s a fairly generous description of many of these routes) that can be used to penetrate the highest reaches of the San Juan Mountains.  One such is the 50-mile Alpine Loop Backcountry Byway.  This is a series of roads cobbled together to form a loop, but initially the roads were used for the transport of ore from mines located in remote recesses of the mountains to transportation hubs located elsewhere.

The Alpine Loop begins and ends in Lake City.  There are lots of options for the four wheeler besides completing the loop.  Among them are side trips to both Silverton and Ouray over different routes; however, your travelers chose to take the loop in its entirety.  Our friends from Buena Vista, Ed & Jeri, joined us for a couple of days, and the trip on the Alpine Loop was the highlight of that visit.

Near the top of Cinnamon Pass

One cannot begin to describe the beauty of the backcountry in this part of the state. There are high mountain vistas with fields of wildflowers.  On clear days the views are more than spectacular—we had such a day.  The road itself is interesting in that one can take a two wheel drive street car on portions (we saw a BMW sedan at one of the trailheads) of the road and other sections require four wheel drive vehicles because of the steepness and the necessity for high clearance.    The Byway climbs from an altitude of 8,761 feet (that’s 2,640 meters for our Commonwealth friends) at Lake City to over 12,800 feet at Engineer Pass.  One actually must pass over Cinnamon Pass at 12,600+ feet and then descend to Animas Fork before climbing again to Engineer.  From the Loop, energetic folks can access trails that will take them to five fourteeners and more than a half dozen thirteeners.  Much of the Loop is located in BLM land, but is surrounded by Weminuche and Uncompahgre Wilderness areas.

View NE from Cinnamon Pass

A Cluster of 14ers

On the return to Lake City from Engineer Pass we were treated to the sighting of a black bear.  He was on the other side of Henson’s Creek from the road.  He was very large and very perplexed.  It seemed clear to us that what he really wanted to do was cross the creek and then the road and continue on his merry way.  However, because there were several of us parked and taking pictures of him and gawking at him through binoculars, he wasn’t about to make any attempt to proceed.

One cannot put too fine of point on the beauty one encounters on the Loop.  However, we were equally stunned by the mass of humanity that converged on the Loop on the day of our visit.  There were all manner of ATVs and nearly every brand of four wheel drive vehicle made in the U.S.  The ATVs tend to swarm together like angry wasps—they actually sound like a swarm of angry wasps, too.  In our humble opinions, they are the scourge of the earth.  Some folks probably feel that way about all motorized vehicles, but not us, we are Jeepers.  To illustrate the crowd, on one particularly nasty part of the four wheel drive road up to Cinnamon Pass, we met a line of Jeeps.  A fellow from Texas in front of the group quipped, “Traffic’s worse than Houston.”  That pretty well summed it up.

Masses of humanity notwithstanding, we thoroughly enjoy our outing and we managed to get out of the mountains before the afternoon rains hit.  There would be the danger of lightning strikes above timberline as well as incredibly slick roads had we be caught up there in a thunder storm.  We did get the dust washed off the Jeep on the ride home, which was nice.

Views from Engineer Pass

Having not exceeded our capacity for four wheeling, we set off on Friday to explore the Wheeler Geologic Area.  Unlike the Alpine Loop, this trip we encountered no other traffic on the way up and only a couple on the return trip.  This 640 acre area was once a National Monument under Teddy Roosevelt’s administration, but because of its remote location and difficult access, it was transferred back to the Forest Service and in the 1950s was designated a National Geologic Area.  In the early 1990s it was added to the La Garita Wilderness.

Twenty odd million years ago this entire region was an active volcano and the resulting caldera was the product of an explosion that was 5,000 times as strong as Mt. Saint Helens (no, that is not a typo).  The rocks that comprise the geologic landscape of Wheeler consist of coarse volcanic tuff.  The debris that formed this tuff was blown into the air from volcanic vents and settled in this place.  Over millennia, wind and water eroded the rock into the existing spires and pinnacles.  At some point in the future the area will be eroded completely away.

All the published guides indicate that the Jeep trip into the area requires a commitment of about 10 hours due to the difficulty and roughness of the 15 mile road.  Undaunted, we started off on the four wheel drive road.  Three hours later, after passing through a variety of sub-alpine terrain and driving on one of the roughest roads we have ever been on, we arrived at the end of the road.  From there it was supposed to be a half mile hike.  It was at least twice that and then we decided to explore the Wheeler Loop Trail, which took a couple of more hours.

As with the Alpine Loop road, words to describe these stunning, picturesque features are hard to find.  After arriving at the end of the road, we hiked into the lower access trail where we got an up close and personal look.  It is amazing to see how the elements have worked the rock to create the unique characteristics.  Later, we backtracked from the base so we could have a view from a higher vantage point.  We weren’t disappointed…it was truly mind-blowing.  While there, we met local artist Stephen Quiller, who has an art studio in Creede.  He was very friendly and tolerated our interruption of his work for a few minutes and graciously allowed us to take a couple of photos of him at work.

Stephen Quiller

After our seventh hour on this trip, we were finally ready to depart for home.  We knew we probably had at least a three hour drive to get off the four wheel drive road.  Not long after our first hour on the road out, we encountered some ATVers who looked like they were having trouble with one of their vehicles.  Since we were the last ones out (it was about 5:30 p.m.), we stopped and asked if they needed assistance.  They were thrilled.  It was decided that we would take half of the six person group with us and the others (two men and a young boy) would attempt to tow the broken down vehicle back to the staging area.  Hence, we wound up with three generations of women: grandmother, mother, and daughter; Texans all.  It seems to be our week to pick up and rescue strays.

Our Rescuees, Safe and Sound