With its somewhat treacherous meandering trail through tiny crawlspaces and arches, down ladders, navigating scree slopes, alcoves and across slick rock sandstone benches while descending steep cliff faces and precarious ledges into the canyon depths, Mee Canyon probably got its name from the last words you hear from its hikers, “It’s meee falllllinnnnnng”. This hike is not for the faint of heart or those that haven’t done their yoga lately to limber up, because it will test your mettle around everyone turn.
It’s a bit of a four wheel drive in to the trailhead, outside of Colorado National Monument. Depending on what time of year you approach, you may have to come in the upper or lower road and you may or may not be able to park right at the trailhead. At this time of year it’s the lower road we came in on and we had to park about 0.8 miles away from the trailhead at the junction of the upper and lower roads and the road to Rattlesnake Canyon which is another stunning area to explore; it’s full of arches, yes there are arches in Colorado!
The first couple miles of the trail have great vistas of the canyons and plains below, but are relatively uninteresting unless you are into sagebrush and rock. The noticeable silence in this area, nary a gnat or bird to be heard, is eerie and calming at the same time. It’s an easy downhill climb most of the way to the canyon rim, and then the fun begins!
As you descend several sandstone benches and pick your way down, you approach the rim where it looks like the trail just ends, and then you see the narrow ledge that leads to a miniature archway that you have to crawl through and then immediately descend a primitive ladder placed by the BLM.
After that, you plunge down a long slippery scree slope on the edge of the cliff face to get to the canyon floor where the varnished cliff faces, rock spires and alcoves tower above your head. As the trail leads deeper into the canyon and around some more benches, you get to a place where again it looks like the trail just stops. Look up! Ah, there it is, we have to climb through that tiny hole in the rock to get to the other side. As you relive your birth squeezing through the hole, packs off as it is that tight, you begin to wonder exactly why am I doing this?
As we continued our hike about 3.5 miles in, we got to a point where there were some steep drops on the sandstone benches before we were to hit the most difficult part of the hike, a 30 foot walk across a 1-2 foot cliff ledge with a steep 20 foot drop off. While our destination was one of the biggest alcoves in Colorado, we unfortunately ran out of time as we were 3 hours into the hike and the sun would set in three hours. So we turned around here and returned just in time to the car to drive out as the sun set. We will leave the rest of the hike for another time and post an update here when we finish it!
Enjoy the pictures and as usual leave your comments and feedback below.
One reply on “Mee Canyon, Black Ridge Canyons Wilderness, Grand Junction, Co.”
Wow! That’s the great thing about the western states: You can go on a hike and it is up to you not to fall and kill yourself. Very open, very uncontrolling, and very beautiful.
Talking about beauty, hey Suzie, that shot of you making your “way through the hole in the rock” is one piece of cheesecake! Hot mama!