Shark's Tooth Trail and Sacred Mount Hesperus

The Shark's Tooth trail is in the LaPlata range of the San Juan Mountains in southwest Colorado and is a continuation of the West Mancos trail that starts at the Transfer Campground near Mancos. It gets its name from the jagged mountain called Shark's Tooth just north of the famous and sacred Mt. Hesperus.

I parked at the scenic Twin Lakes, about a half mile before the official trail head. The forest here is mostly Engelmann spruce trees. The road up here is a narrow gravel Forest Service road, with lots of twist and turns.

Mt. Hesperus at 13,232 ft. is the highest mountain in this range and is one of the four sacred peaks, the sacred peak of the north, that the Navajo use to mark their traditional territory.

This is a trail where I have seen a population of pikas, a small rabbit relative that is noted for its industrious activity of gathering hay during the late summer for food and warm bedding during the cold winters.

The small mammals hide and burrow under the broken rocks in the scree fields here. The pikas are thought to be endangered by global warming disruption of the snow fields that provide them some insulation from the cold high elevation temperatures.

The trail climbs steeply above the tree line to a tundra area, mostly grasses and flowers and some short shrubs. The Shark's Tooth pass is at 11,396 ft and is very rocky with scree. The trail continues over the saddle and hooks up to the Bear Creek Trail that comes up from the Dolores River to the west.

It always seems to be windy up at this pass, even when it seems calm everywhere else. I went over the saddle and found a seat sheltered from the wind, enjoyed the view, with the ominous Shark's Tooth looking over my shoulder.

From where I started it was 2.2 miles to the pass and took me about 1.5 hours going up. There is an historic mining loop along the way, but there was some snow in the way and I skipped that part. My hike was in June when there were still patches of snow on the trail and too early for many wildflowers.

Rim Trail and Transfer Trail Loop-Transfer Campground

The Rim Trail and the Transfer Trail are part of the Transfer Campground Trail System in the San Juan National Forest near Mancos in southwest Colorado.

I started along the Rim Trail where is crosses Forest Road 561, about a mile south of the Transfer Campground and followed the loop clockwise. After about 200 yards there is a trail junction with the Box Canyon Trail. The Box Canyon Trail is part of the loop I followed but I walked this part at the end of the hike.

The Rim Trail continues along the rim of the canyon overlooking the West Mancos River, snowmelt fed from the LaPlata Mountains. There were excellent views of Mt. Hesperus and the other snowy peaks of this range of Colorado mountains.

It is about 1 mile to the Transfer Campground. The route continues down the West Mancos Trail into the canyon to a trail junction with the Transfer Trail. The West Mancos Trail continues upstream and the Transfer Trail goes down stream.

The Transfer Trail was a fairly rough route along the West Mancos River. In May, there was water flow across the trail in places making for some steep slippery spots and a number of very large trees had crashed during the winter. Some short detours were needed and some scrambling over thick trunks was called for. These spots will probably be cleared later in the season.

The forest was very thick at the canyon bottom, mostly spruce and Douglas Firs and there were still patches of snow along the banks.

The Box Canyon Trail junction is just past a flow control structure that seems to appear just when you think you're in the deepest wilderness. This segment climbs back to the rim. It took me about 2:30 hours to walk this loop of about 3 miles.