Colorado's Best Training Runs: Lower Monument Canyon Trail

<h3 style="text-align: center;"> When you just want to get away from all the usual places, find a trail, and run your heart out...</h3>

Lower Monument Canyon Trail near Grand Junction is 2.35 miles (one way) of uphill grind with spectacular views. Photo by Alan Versaw.

 

Rare is the person who doesn't enjoy a good trail run. Let's face it, sometimes the urban scapes where many of us train get a little old. A little natural majesty does a lot to enhance the enjoyment factor of a training run.

 

Lower Monument Canyon Trail in Colorado National Monument packs a lot of natural majesty into its 2.35 miles. And adventurous souls can extend that trail run to a full six miles.

 

It all begins at an obscure National Park Service trailhead west of Grand Junction. To get driving directions to the trailhead, type 1901 Broadway, Grand Junction, CO, as the destination into your favorite online mapping site. Although the trailhead parking lot is not large, it is ample for almost any weekday morning and for very early trips on weekends.

 

If you're at all familiar with Grand Junction, you know that heat is the word during the summer months. Nighttime temperatures may not drop any lower than 70F and can easily top 100F during daylight hours. Combine that with the fact that there is nothing resembling water available on the trail and you begin to understand why this trail demands your respect. Start your run well hydrated.

 

Early morning runs or late evening runs are all that is recommended during the summer months. Conditions are much more tolerable at all hours of the day during fall, winter, and spring.

 

The trail begins at 4700 feet and, initially, is wide enough for three people to run abreast if there isn't other foot traffic on the trail. At about 0.25 miles from the trailhead the route approaches the boundary fence of Colorado National Monument. On your left will be an upscale neighborhood of homes that abuts the national monument. The trail continues along the boundary fence until 0.70 miles. To this point, elevation gain has been slight.

 

But now, the fun begins.

 

As the trail enters Lower Monument Canyon it takes a sharp turn to the west, presenting you with this view of what's ahead. Your destination is the small sandstone protrusion just right and above center in the photograph. Only the protrusion isn't small when you get there, and it has a name--Independence Monument. Once Independence Monument drops out of view, you won't see it again for another mile, but you won't miss it. There's plenty to see--and plenty of trail to watch to keep safe footing--in the meanwhile.

 

The trail hugs the base of towering sandstone walls on your right. During summer months, these sandstone walls provide welcome shade on the trail below well into the morning hours (long past the time sensible people are running the trail).

 

On your way to Independence Monument, you will visit three side canyons beneath the sandstone walls. The total elevation gain from trailhead to the base of Independence Monument is 590 feet. Most of the elevation gain occurs in the first two of these side canyons. For this stretch of nearly one mile, the uphill is both relentless and brutal. Remember, it's a training run, and you're building strength as you go.

 

Park service trail crews have done a remarkable job making a serviceable trail up the canyon, but there are a few observations to be made. One, portions of the trail are nothing more than slickrock. Slickrock is very unforgiving if you make a mistake. Two, the rock steps placed in the trail at numerous points are spaced for hikers, not for runners. This will mean you need to shorten your strides much more than feels natural in many places. Three, there are countless opportunities to make a bad step and hurt yourself--though these opportunities are more magnified on the way down.

 

All this to say that the trail is a moderately technical trail run. You don't need heavy-duty trail running shoes (although trail runners aren't a bad choice here), but you do need to use common sense.

 

Coming out of the second side canyon, you start to get some full-scale views of Independence Monument. If you're not in too deep of oxygen debt to notice, this is the view you'll get for your efforts to this point.

 

But you still have another half-mile to go and one more small side canyon to negotiate. But your elevation gain is almost entirely over. You can relax a little and hope that your calves loosen up a little as the gradient evens out.

 

Once at the base of the monument (2.35 miles), you have a decision to make--turn around and return to the trailhead or continue on up the trail. If you continue on, you'll eventually have to make a decision on where to turn around, but that's a matter of personal taste and fitness that I won't try to determine for you in this article.

 

I like to go to about three miles before turning around. It gives me a nice six-mile round-trip route and yields some nicer views of Independence Monument.

 

It is possible to take the trail a full six miles (one way) to the canyon rim and the paved road (Rim Rock Road) that traverses the upper portion of Colorado National Monument. With the way your quads will be throbbing once you reach the top, it would be wise to have a ride waiting for you rather than attempting a gonzo downhill trip back to the trailhead. Total elevation gain from the trailhead to the canyon rim is 1440 feet. Stretches of the uppermost portion of the trail are reasonably exposed. And, you will be encountering other people on the trail unless you make a very early start. Please make wise choices, not foolish ones.

 

As previously mentioned, this trail demands your respect. Such is the price tag of natural majesty.

 

Portions of the trail can get icy during the winter months, but, generally speaking, this is a 12-months-out-of-the-year kind of trail. If you are running the trail with somebody (always a good choice), leave enough room between runners so that any trailing runners can clearly see the trail. There are too many surprises in the bed of the trail to move along without a clear view of what's coming.

 

Although my normal recovery pace hovers somewhere around 7:10 per mile, this trail tends, for me, to run at about 8:45 per mile. And that's with a lot more energy burn than my usual recovery run. Don't plan on making up the time you lost on the way up with a speedy return trip. In my experience, the downhill (from Independence Monument) goes all of about two minutes faster than the uphill. There are any number of points along this trail that qualify as really poor places to take a header. Keep your speed and footwork under control! Remember that the spacing of those steps built into the trail are for hikers, not runners.

 

If you have enough left in the tank after your run, switch out your shoes at the car, throw on a hat, grab some water--and maybe binoculars and a camera--and try the trail again at a casual pace. This place isn't in the inventory of national park service properties without reason.

 

Wildlife abounds along the trail. If you run the trail early in the morning, you may be fortunate enough to catch of glimpse of some of the monument's desert bighorn sheep. Chances of seeing the sheep once the trail gets busy, however, drop to just about zero.

 

In spring and summer, the trail and canyon walls resound with the in-flight twittering of white-throated swifts. Songs of the resident canyon and rock wrens echo off the canyon walls. Ash-throated flycatchers and Say's phoebes serve up their pleasant calls along the trail as well. On a really good day, you may be rewarded with a glimpse of a peregrine falcon. If you move slowly enough along the trail, turkey vultures and common ravens may circle opportunistically overhead. Whiptails are the common desert lizard along the trail, but you may be fortunate enough to catch a glimpse of the brightly-colored collared lizards that make their home here. Snakes are a possibility, but in numerous runs and hikes on this trail, I've never encountered a snake, poisonous or otherwise.

 

Fees: None for the trailhead, but you will be charged the park entrance fee for any vehicles meeting you at the upper end of the trail at Rick Rock Road.

 

Author's Note: This is the first in what I hope will be a long series of great places to take a training run when you need a break from the usual. I invite and welcome reader submissions for this series. I do want to stress that, despite the fact that the run profiled above is a fairly arduous trail run, this series is not intended to tilt toward the arduous or technical. Places can be great for training runs for any number of reasons; the difficulty factor is far from the only factor in determining a great trail run.