Grand Junction, CO - Serpents Trail

One of the most popular hikes in the Grand Junction area is the Serpents Trail which goes up the old road into the Colorado National Monument. Many use it as an aerobic workout like the two who started right before us in their trail running shoes, who ran up and down the trail. Hmmm. Not us. We planned to use it as a training hike so we strapped our packs on our backs, filled with water, grabbed our poles and took off at a much slower pace. We thought we’d go up, head down and retreat to the RV for some ‘administrative’ time. You know: the cleaning, the e-mails, the finances, etc.

The trail itself has an interesting history, having been built by the legendary John Otto. His grand vision was to connect Grand Junction, CO to Moab, UT via a series of shorter scenic roads and part of a transcontinental road system. He began the road in 1912 and continued sporadically until 1921 when Mesa County took over. His road was extremely curvy and gained altitude fast, and it was here that cars had to ascend backwards so that gravity would enable the gas to reach the motor. It is amazing to look at some of the work required to make this road viable. Here’s a wall that was built to help hold the road up.

Culverts were built to help with drainage. Massive boulders were moved, sections or rock were dynamited to make the road level. Here’s a picture from the NPS showing men placing drill bits by hand into the correct place for holes for dynamite.

Imagine backing up this road, quick elevation changes, no guard rail, only wide enough for 1 1/2 cars in most places. Later the National Park Service built a different road into the park, using a part of this road. The rest became the Serpent’s Trail.

It was a beautiful trail, winding through some fantastic rock formations, opening up new and better views of the Monument as we climbed higher which helped mitigate the strain of climbing. At one point you can look down and see the new road winding up beside this trail through the rain.

Motorcyclists love the road and bicyclists do also - probably for different reasons.

We reached the top, turned around and - shucky darn, here’s the rain again. We walked a bit hoping that it was going to be a light sprinkle but, nope, a full fledged rain. We donned our ponchos and kept walking on down.

At the bottom, we decided to take another trail which also had some wonderful rock formations. But, since it wound by the small creek, it also had some wildflowers.

Nice hike but we turned around to get back to the RV for that ‘fun’ stuff.

4.94 mi., 1020’