It is 1.2 miles to the start of the two hiking loops on top of Prater Ridge. The north loop is 4 miles and the south loop is 2.4 miles. There is a shortcut trail that forms the two loops into a figure 8. From the north loop there are good views of several ranges of the nearby San Juan Mountains and the Montezuma and Mancos valleys below.The south loop views are of the canyons along the main park road traveling toward the south part of the park. It is one of the few trails in the park that doesn't go past any of the 700 year old Ancestral Pueblo Ruins for which the park is famous.
In 2000, it was a bad year for forest fires at Mesa Verde. The Bircher Fire scorched the north side of the park near the Morefield campground. Mesa Verde means "green table" and for a while in 2000, it was a "black table".The Gambel Oaks are recovering, bushy new shoots sprouting up around the charred remains of the forest fire victims. These oaks don't grow very tall, they grow more like a shrub here. In the fall the oaks put on a good display of color. The Utah Serviceberry shrub also adds some yellow to the scene.
The trail mostly follows along the sandstone cliffs. I scanned the cliffs to see if there were any small ruins sites but didn’t see any. It is possible that the people that lived here came to this area for materials as there were some Douglas Firs in the shaded north facing pockets and the acorns from the Oaks were probably a food source.
Most of the charred tree trunks from the forest fires are still standing. Most of what is visible now is the colorful oaks. There are only a few pockets where the evergreen trees survived. When I’ve hiked the full 7.4 mile loop it has taken me 3:30 hours. Hiking just the shorter 3.7 mile south loop route took about 2:15 hours.
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