Agile Trekker: Exclamation Point and Green Mountain, Black Canyon of the Gunnison National Park north rim, CO

Date	Distance	Time	Elevation Gain	Average Moving Time	Year to Date Miles
5/24/2024	6.8 miles	3 hours 35 minutes	1,012'	2.1	364.7 miles

Parking:

Basic Information - Black Canyon Of The Gunnison National Park (U.S. National Park Service) (nps.gov)
There is a fee. The National Park Service annual pass will work here.
North Rim Ranger Station

Map:

Directions: Follow the North Vista trail from the trailhead. Take the spur trail to Exclamation Point, then return to the main trail and continue to the summit of Green Mountain

I had actually never heard of Black Canyon of the Gunnison before researching national parks in Colorado. Looking at a photo of the park, I was not immediately excited by it either. But this park is a gem. I read about the park and suggested hikes in a blog I follow, Jan's Jaunts and Jabberings – Just some joyful jawing about backpacking, hiking and snowshoeing (wordpress.com), and came up with the idea of spending a day on the north rim and a day on the south rim. Today was our north rim day. We stayed in Montrose, Colorado, which is closer to the south rim.

Our first hike was to the summit of Green Mountain. The canyon is beautiful, and I see now that photos just can't do it justice. The canyon has incredibly steep walls, and it's just hard to capture the depth of this place in a single photo. The north rim has fewer hikers than the south rim from what we experienced. We did meet a group of young boys out there for a bachelor party trip. They were fun. The guy getting married has already been to 46 national parks and he's only 26! I have a long way to go. So many hikes to do! I need to get a move on! I have an urgency to hike as much as possible while I still am relatively healthy.

It is possible to hike to the bottom of the canyon and back up. The boys we met had done so, and said their legs were toast after doing so. It requires a permit. I decided this was beyond my fitness level. While hiking, we kept trying to figure out where the routes were to the bottom of the canyon. The walls are so steep, so how do you get down? We saw some potential paths, and they just looked like scree fields. I would have had PTSD hiking down them.

After we finished our hike, we drove the length of the north rim road, stopping at all of the lookouts along the way (minor extra mileage not included above).