Gunnison

Gunnison sits in a broad, high-altitude valley at nearly 7,700 feet, ringed by peaks and cut through by the river that gives the town its name, and it has the unhurried, practical feel of a place that’s always been more ranching and railroad than resort. Western Colorado University anchors one end of town, cattle ranches spread out from the other, and on the winter morning we arrived, the thermometer outside the diner read eighteen below — Gunnison regularly claims some of the coldest recorded temperatures in the lower forty-eight, a fact locals mention with visible pride.

The Black Canyon of the Gunnison

Twenty minutes east of town, the Black Canyon of the Gunnison drops so steep and so narrow that some inner walls receive as little as thirty-three minutes of direct sunlight a day, which is exactly how it earned its name. We hiked along the South Rim, stopping at overlooks where the Gunnison River appeared as a thin, distant thread nearly half a mile below, the Painted Wall rising sheer on the far side striped with pale pegmatite. Lia, usually unbothered by heights, kept a careful distance from the unguarded rim edges — this is one of the few national parks where the drop-offs come with almost no railings at all.

Blue Mesa Reservoir and the valley

West of town, the Gunnison River is dammed into Blue Mesa Reservoir, Colorado’s largest body of water and a serious fishery for kokanee salmon and lake trout. We drove the shoreline at sunset, sagebrush hills turning purple and the water going still and mirror-flat, then stopped at a roadside overlook to watch a rancher moving cattle across the highway in no particular hurry, traffic simply waiting. It captured something about Gunnison’s whole character: a working valley that tourism visits, rather than the other way around.

Getting There

Gunnison-Crested Butte Regional Airport sits just outside town and receives direct winter flights from several major cities, making it a surprisingly easy fly-in for such a remote valley. By car, it’s about four hours southwest of Denver via U.S. Highway 285 and Highway 50, a drive that climbs over Monarch Pass and offers some of the best high-mountain views in the state.