The underrated US city with a ‘mini Grand Canyon’ and few tourists

There are two ways to reach Colorado’s Rattlesnake Canyon, home to the world’s second-largest concentration of natural stone arches. The first is by tackling a steep, strenuous 25-kilometre round-trip trail that squirms through rock-walled canyons, skirting steep ledges and sun-baked sandstone slabs.

The second involves an exhilarating 4WD trip through Colorado National Monument followed by a scenic six-kilometre meander along the canyon’s upper rim. Naturally, I choose the meander.

Josh Wilson, from Adrenaline Driven Adventures, is my guide today, and our transport is a Polaris RZR, a rugged off-roader that looks like it eats canyons for breakfast.

After following a snaking road up onto the monument’s 2000-metre-high plateau, we plunge into the adjacent Black Ridge Canyons Wilderness, careening along a dusty, sagebrush-flanked track to reach the trailhead.

“Just be careful,” says Wilson, as we set off on foot towards the rim. “We’re a long way from help.”

Within minutes, we’ve spotted the first arch, one of about 35 that pepper the upper reaches of the canyon.

Scoured out of a layer of 175-million-year-old Entrada sandstone by centuries of rain, wind and ice, the arches range from dinky, fist-sized openings to yawning 36-metre chasms topped by soaring stone bridges.

Unlike in nearby Arches National Park, site of the world’s largest number of arches, you can walk across these sturdy stone bridges, a surreal, vertigo-inducing experience worth it for the dramatic photo op alone.

The other notable difference between them? During our two-hour hike, we pass just two other people.

The arches are the decorative flourish on a dramatic landscape of squirming red-rock canyons and soaring spires that’s been nicknamed the “mini-Grand Canyon”. Towering cliffs reveal a geological timeline of distinct rock layers that begins with 1.7-billion-year-old pre-Cambrian schist. “We like to say that this is where the schist hits the fan,” jokes Wilson.

Rattlesnake Canyon alone would justify a trip to this part of western Colorado, but it turns out it’s just one of an epic trifecta of uniquely contrasting landscapes that surround the city of Grand Junction.

The second is the aforementioned Colorado National Monument, which we see in all its plunging, red-rock glory on Rim Rock Drive, a 37-kilometre hand-built road that winds up and over the monument, delivering a succession of superlative-sapping vistas.

The third is Grand Mesa, which claims to be the world’s largest flat-top mountain, a 3425-metre-high monolith that rears out of the Colorado Plateau like a giant’s footstool.

After lunch we swap the RZR for a roofless, three-wheeled Slingshot, another outlandish Polaris invention, and drive up onto the mesa’s lake-studded summit. Along the way we pass the Book Cliffs, a distinctive 400-kilometre-long mountain range that would be the star attraction anywhere else but barely gets a mention here because of the region’s other terrestrial celebrities.

My ears pop twice during the drive up, a journey that starts in parched, sagebrush-dotted desert and finishes in verdant sub-alpine forest with more than 300 spruce-rimmed lakes. After passing the still snow-dusted Powderhorn Mountain Ski Resort, we stop at a holiday park where people are relaxing outside log cabins and fishing for rainbow trout in cobalt blue alpine lakes. We could be in Switzerland.

That night, I’m brought back down to earth at Bin 707, one of several fabulous eateries in Grand Junction’s delightful sculpture-lined main street. While enjoying a tender lamb tenderloin with an excellent glass of Exodus blaufrankisch (who knew Colorado made wine?), I’m reminded of a quote from John Otto, the wilderness lover who was instrumental in getting the region designated a national monument in 1911: “Some folks think I’m crazy, but I want to see this scenery opened up to all people.”

THE DETAILS

Fly
Qantas flies to Grand Junction Regional Airport via Dallas/Fort Worth. See qantas.com

Stay
One of Grand Junction’s original historic hotels, the refurbished Hotel Melrose has stylish, well-equipped rooms and a popular tiki-inspired cocktail bar. Rooms from $US190 ($285) a night. See thehotelmelrose.com

Tour
Adrenaline Driven Adventures offers a range of guided and self-drive tours. The Rattlesnake Arches hiking tour costs $US799 ($1197) for up to three people, and the Grand Mesa Slingshot tour is $US325 ($487) a person. See adacgj.com

More
visitgrandjunction.com

The writer was a guest of Brand USA (visittheusa.com.au) and Colorado Tourism (colorado.com).