Hiking the Gunnison Route at Black Canyon of the Gunnison National Park (+ Overlooks!)

After spending a few days around the million dollar highway, touring a mine, going on a few 4x4 trails in a jeep, seeing tons of amazing scenery, and exploring the Switzerland of America, we've headed north to Black Canyon of the Gunnison National Park in Montrose, Colorado. Black Canyon of the Gunnison is the least visited of Colorado's four national parks and is home to some of the steepest cliffs in North America. It gets its name Black Canyon not because of the color, but because some parts of the canyon receive only 33 total minutes of sunlight per day because of how steep and narrow the canyon is. Tomorrow we're going to have a jam-packed day exploring both the north and south rim of the park, but first we have a mission to accomplish in the park today. We're planning on exploring Black Canyon of the Gunnison National Park tomorrow, but today we're going to head into the park to hopefully get a wilderness permit to do the number one thing we wanted to do while we're here, the Gunnison Route. The Gunnison Route is an intense hike that takes you down into the canyon to the river. It goes down 1,800 feet in a mile. It's going to be the most intense hike we have ever done. And because of the hike's difficulty, they require you to get a free permit to do the hike and they only give out 15 permits per day on a first-come, first served basis. They start passing out permits one and a half hours before the visitor center closes the day before your hike. So today the visitor center closes at 6 p.m. which means they'll start passing out permits at 4 30 p.m. When we called the other day to ask about how early we should arrive to make sure we get one, they said around 1 p.m. So we're gonna head to the park now and hope for the best. Good news! We got the permits! We were actually first in line and there are actually five people that were backpacking tonight down in the canyon who had already claimed five of the permits. We did not know that that was like a possibility of happening. So good thing to know there could be people backpacking that have already taken some of them, but most people didn't show up till 3. There was a huge surge at 3 p.m. of people and basically all the permits were sold out at that point. So we didn't have to get there as early as we did, but we're glad we did because we really wanted to get the permits. So we just got the safety briefing. We're gonna get up super bright and early tomorrow and we are gonna conquer this beast! For the Gunnison Route, you start on the Oak Flat Loop Trail and then you split off onto the actual Gunnison Route. It's called a route, not a trail because it's not maintained at all and there are no trail markings. It's pretty hard to follow. The ranger yesterday showed us a photo book and showed us some spots where people typically get a little turned around and lost to hopefully help us not have that happen to us. So I think that's my biggest concern, getting lost and falling. Out of the like three or four hours we were sitting at the visitor center yesterday, we tried to like shield our eyes from the canyon just trying not to spoil the views. So we're getting like our first real look at it right now. So freaking crazy. We just passed the split off from the Oak Flat Loop to the Gunnison Route. Things are about to get real, real steep. I'm a little nervous, not gonna lie. The feeling of slipping on just like loose gravel and stuff is not my favorite feeling ever so I don't know. It'll be fun. I feel like it doesn't look as steep on the camera and it's not scary. It's just really slick. Quick little map update. We're 0.6 miles in. Turns out it's 1.5 total not one and we are a fifth maybe to the river. You can see all of our weird movements right there. One suggestion from the ranger as well as a lot of people on all trails is to wear gloves because as you've probably seen we've been kind of using our hands to get down some of these steeper parts just to kind of protect your hands from the rocks and the dirt. So we're gonna look super cool now. So there's two sections of an 80 foot chain that help you down. We just got to the first one. Apparently the chains are in some not weird spots but there's other spots that are just as bad or more steep that don't have any chains so don't really understand the method to the madness on this but I'm thankful for them. One thing that the ranger and people on all trails recommended is taking photos of the view behind you because it's really easy to get lost coming back up. It's easier to know where to go going down so they say to always look around and kind of take a mental picture and a physical picture of what you need to do on your way back up so you don't get lost. Map update we're 1.1 miles in and we're getting closer. It's taken us an hour and 41 or wait yeah an hour 41 minutes so far. To be honest it's longer than we thought it would take but we have stopped a lot to film and take photos so we'll use that as our excuse. We're getting so close the water's getting louder and louder. Oh there we go coming around this bend. Oh wow. Maybe another 200 feet down 100 feet something like that. We're on flat ground. Yes. Black Canyon of the Gunnison National Park is home to some of the oldest rocks in North America and it's nicknamed Colorado's Grand Canyon. The Gunnison River which is what we're sitting on right now drops an average of 43 feet per mile which is six times more than how much the Colorado River drops in the Grand Canyon. This spot is incredible. The river we're like two feet from the river. I'm gonna dip my toes in before we get out of here but man it's these canyon walls are just crazy. They're just towering above you. You can see why it's called Black Canyon of the Gunnison here because this little nook in there who even knows when that's gonna get sunlight on it today. It's very very dark and black in there. So we picked up some snacks for the hike yesterday and Katherine ran into Target real quick to grab some she went in for trail mix and it says trail mix on this bag but let me just read you the ingredients and you tell me. The caramel macchiato flavor. It's chocolate pretzel balls, coffee glazed pecans, coffee dusted white chocolate, coffee beans, salted caramel praline almonds, peanuts and caramel cashews. It sounds like sugar sugar sugar, coffee and a nut or two in there but it's ridiculously delicious. It says favorite day on here because it every time you eat this you're like oh my god this is my favorite day ever. It's cold. We have soaked up the experience here. It's just amazing down here. We could spend all day and you can actually backpack overnight here. Maybe we can do that next time but it was awesome. Even with just the day hike it is incredible to get to experience something that only 15 people per day get to experience. It's just a little off the beaten path at a you know busy national park and it's just standing among these giant walls. It's just ridiculous but now we have to go back up which will be hard. Having such a hard time on the way up. I thought going down would be harder because you'd be slipping more going down some slick steep downhill trail but I found going up to me much harder not only physically obviously it works your lungs and your legs more. I think just mentally it's a lot harder for me. I typically tend to prefer going up on hikes than going down. It's just easier and more comfortable even though it is physically harder. With this you get that adult jungle gym factor again but basically the entire way. You're just using your hands a lot and it's just like a little climbing gym. It's fun. All right we made it back to the oak flat loop out of the permit part. Took us about an hour and 15 grueling minutes. Oh man it was so hard. There were times I wanted to cry. I was kind of terrified but Adam helped coach me through it but absolutely worth it. If you can stand in line and wait for the permit it's just such a special experience to get to go down to the river because not many people get to do that. It's so rewarding. I'm proud of myself right now. Black Canyon of the Gunnison National Park is home to two different areas the North Rim and the South Rim. We're currently on the South Rim which is the more popular part of the park and it's accessed through Montrose Colorado. Besides the Gunnison route that we did on the South Rim today and a couple other route options and trails one of the most popular things to do in this area is drive the seven mile scenic drive which has 12 different overlooks. Since we're pretty exhausted to be honest from the Gunnison route we have a lot more park we want to see. We're going to drive down the road and just stop at a handful of the ones that we hear have the best views. We're at pulpit rock and you can actually get a pretty good view of the route that we just came down and where we had our little picnic lunch down there. Way down there by the water. Keep down all this, swoop that way and eat lunch somewhere down in there. It's really crazy to see it from that angle. It felt steep when we were hiking up and down but it looks pretty wild and it looks just like loose rock and that's what it was but it looks I don't know it's just really cool to see it from this perspective. Since the Gunnison river drops so many feet per mile the erosion cuts down faster than other forces of erosion can cut and widen it which makes the walls that's why they're so steep. We're at the painted wall overlook and this cliff over here is the tallest cliff in Colorado at 2,300 feet and the stripes on there they are 3d so if they were cut if you were to slice off a sliver of the rock face there would be a completely different pattern and then also the the height if you had the empire state building sitting on the floor of the canyon it would only reach about halfway up. Even though dogs are allowed at the overlooks on the south rim since we were going to be gone for hours hiking the Gunnison route and it's so hot out today we got an airbnb in delta colorado which is about 45 minutes away from the park so Kona had a cool and safe place to be so we're gonna go check on her right now play for a little bit make some lunch and then head to the north rim for the rest of the day. We just discovered this Thai chili mango chopped salad kit super good broccoli cauliflower cabbage kale sunflower seeds radicchio ridiculous radicchio brussels sprouts dried mango pieces and then crisp yeah crisp quinoa and a zesty thai sweet chili vinaigrette we just had it for the first time last night super good we're hooked on it now. We had read that it wasn't super practical to visit the north and the south rim in one day despite being able to see them from each other they're actually an hour and 45 minute drive apart but since we're staying in delta which is kind of halfway between the two we figured we'd give it a shot so the north rim seems much more remote than the south rim we had to drive through all these teeny tiny towns to get here and even the road leading up to the park the last few miles was a dirt road it's very well maintained very smooth suitable for any car and with all that there's less people. So the north rim is smaller scale than the south rim and it seems to have less amenities but it does have a scenic drive as well similar to the south rim however this one only has five overlooks so we're gonna go drive around and check those out first and then we're gonna do a shortish three mile hike which will be much easier than the three mile hike we did this morning so the first overlook is the narrows overlook which is a much more narrow part of the canyon camera's just not going to be doing this place justice this place is incredible the walls are so just sheer and they're jagged and have these interesting stripes and patterns on them but it's so dang sunny out that everything looks so washed down it's shadowy but take our word for it this park has just blown us away today it is so different than just an hour away in the san juan mountains it's ridiculous. After a long hot day doing the gunnison route we are loving these overlooks that you can just pull up to and walk maybe about 50 steps some less it's a nice change of pace for our final black canyon of the gunnison adventure we are hiking to exclamation point we're gonna see if it's gonna make us exclaim it's three miles round trip pretty level i think 300 something of elevation gain so thankfully pretty flat it's the only reason i convinced him to do it we made it and i'm exclaiming so the good news is the view is incredible it's this narrow straight shot back through the canyon with the river rushing below you can actually hear the roar of the river from this high up which is just crazy to me the bad news is it's very shadowy in the canyon it's living up to the black canyon name so the camera is just not doing a good job showing you how cool of a spot this is this would probably be a better hike to do midday when the sun's kind of shooting down into the canyon so bad timing on our part but we're just surrounded by all these jagged canyon walls right now and it's pretty incredible the hike out here was mostly tree covered so it wasn't super exciting but the view at the end is pretty spectacular that's going to do it for our time here at black canyon of the gunnison national park we loved it here and we feel like it's one of the more underrated and overshadowed in national parks especially here in colorado doing that gunnison route this morning was just so much fun and it added an extra challenge but even if you come here and you can't do that that's okay because there's lots of short hikes and all the overlooks you can do so there's something for everybody here we're actually gonna be backtracking in our next video back to the san juan mountains for two reasons one it is freaking hot it's like 90 to 100 degrees and it's possible but brutal to live in a van in those temperatures we tried for two days and we're absolutely miserable so we're gonna go find some cooler weather also there's a hike we are dying to do that had a little bit too much snow a few days ago so we're hoping by next weekend a little bit more of it's thawed out and we can do at least most of the hike so hopefully that's where you'll see us next and if we can do it it's going to be one of the more beautiful hikes we've done in a long time we did it we did it we survived this day it was long and we're so far we've survived the cicadas they're everywhere they're surrounding us it's the 17 year release apparently oh i see one do you yeah ew it's cicada is it gate that looks like a cicada yeah i've been hearing them all day they've just been clack clack clack clack ew no stop cicadas and roaches my two least favorite things on this planet oh and you have a huge black thing in your tooth