Backpacking through Little Book Cliffs Wild Horse Area

Last weekend, I went on my first backpacking trip with my boyfriend. It was exactly as adorable and cliche as you’d expect from two millennials in love.

For my birthday weekend, Nick and I drove over three hours from Denver just shy of Grand Junction. Finishing up the last half of the podcast on US politics, we turned off an exit to an old dirt road and bumbled along until we hit a dirt parking lot and a fence.

We had arrived to Little Book Cliff Wild Horse Area. This place is one of just three areas left in the US for wild horses to roam. The 30,000 acres was our arid adventure through a stunning canyon landscape.

We started at the Coal Canyon Trailhead and meandered through the Main Canyon. Somewhere along the way, we dropped our tent in a nice flat sandy area next to the river. We took a nap, since someone (Nick) was tired, because of a decision (Nick’s) to wake up at 5:15am, because he (Nick) was worried about ski traffic.

But man was it nice to lay down in our tent, complete quiet in the middle of the canyon with the sunshine warming our skin.

After consuming all the Lärabars and leaving most of our provisions behind, we hiked onward to the top of Round Mountain to our end point of “four wheel drive road.”

We stumbled up higher and higher until we saw an old gas well pad. There was a car there by chance who was driving off, when I decided to run towards them to the gas well pad, convincing the driver that I was but a lost soul in desperate need of help.

The rest of the evening was chowing down on some smashed chickpea cucumber sandwiches and teaching Nick the beauty of card games, namely gin. And taking beauty shots of Peyties of course.

A slightly chilly night with lots of snuggles and we woke up to a quiet morning in the canyon. We slowly woke up, packed up, and headed out. Lucky for us we captured a peak at three wild horses right before we got back to the trailhead along with some other classic canyon scenes along the way. Purple cacti were an added bonus.