Black Canyon of the Gunnison National Park | Saturday, May 10, 2025
After hiking all of the trails above the rim in Black Canyon of the Gunnison National Park I’ve been thinking about finally trying one of the Inner Canyon Wilderness routes down to the Gunnison River which have been on my to-do list for a very long time. Although Diane and I backpacked down Red Rock Canyon almost ten years ago, which is definitely the easiest route into the canyon, I’ve been apprehensive about trying the other routes into the canyon since I’m not really a big fan of steep and loose trails, so I have kept putting off trying them. However, when I noticed that the Park was moving the permit system for the South Rim routes onto Recreation.gov earlier this year, I figured it was finally time to grab a permit to try out the Gunnison Route, which is supposed to be the next easiest route into the canyon.
I didn’t want to try this hike alone, so I recruited my friend Jackson to come along with me since he does like scrambling routes and we made plans to hike down early this Saturday morning so we could be back home in the afternoon to finish packing for our upcoming river trip. I picked Jackson up at his house around 6:00am and after driving to the rim of the Black Canyon we were started our descent into the canyon shortly before 7:30am.
Here’s view of the Gunnison Point Overlook as we followed the Oak Flat Trail to the start of the Gunnison Route.
The Gunnison Route splits from the main trail and quickly descends into the canyon from here.
This steep section of the trail has a chain to assist. Although it’s not completely necessary, it was nice to hold onto during the descent.
Jackson following me down the steep route.
The trail became less steep as we neared the bottom of the canyon.
A nice view awaited us at the bottom of the Gunnison Route.
We quickly hiked upstream along the Gunnison River to catch the last of the shade in the canyon before the sun came up over the rim.
I liked this striped rock that we walked over.
Gunnison River
Tall Walls
This was where the trail heading upstream got rough and we decided to turn around.
We headed back downstream to the shaded campsites to rest for a little bit before starting our hike back up. We were the first ones down the trail this morning and had the place to ourselves.
Before starting back up the steep trail we hiked downstream along the river a short distance until the trail got rough.
Jackson checking out the rapids. Maybe we should have brought along our packrafts…
Looking back as we started the steep climb back out of the canyon. We would pass a few of small groups of hikers along the route on the way up.
Back to the trail chain. We didn’t really use it too much on the way up, it was more helpful on the way down.
Once we reached the top of the trail, we walked over to the Gunnison Point Overlook to look down on where we had just been before returning to my Jeep and heading home.
Although I am glad that I finally hiked this Inner Canyon route, I did not really enjoy going down the steep and loose trail even though I had no problems going back up. If only there was a way to start at the bottom of the routes and only hike up them! I really don’t think this kind of hiking is for me, so I probably won’t be trying any of the other routes into the Black Canyon in the future since they are all even more difficult than this one.
Enjoyed catching up on your latest series of adventures and photography! I’m surprised that a permit is needed to do those south rim routes. Maybe a tactic to reduce risk of rockfall injuries?
Probably that and to help preserve the wilderness experience in the canyon.