Prater Canyon Winter Trail

The Prater Canyon Winter Trail is a new winter sports trail in 2012 at Mesa Verde National Park in southwest Colorado. The trail is designed as a 4.7 mile lasso loop with trailhead parking at the Montezuma Lookout Point at the 6.2 miles mark on the main park road.

During the 2012 winter season Mesa Verde has groomed the snow is several areas to promote winter sports. The park entrance fee is being waived in January and February to promote more winter visitation.

The Prater Canyon area has not been open for hiking before the 2012 winter season. The two way segment of trail descends gradually and extends for about 1.2 miles before reaching the loop segment near the tunnel. The groomed surface was covered with a couple of inches of fresh snow during my hike.

It took me about 0:35 minutes to arrive at the loop segment on snowshoes. On the late February day that I hiked, it appeared that the groomed part of the loop had been shortened, not extending as far up Prater Canyon as designed. This may have been due to the relatively modest levels of snow in 2012. I hiked two days after 3 inches of snow and there had been 6 inches the previous week. There was plenty of snow when I hiked but the base wasn’t deep.

The terrain along most of the Prater Canyon area has been burned by the Bircher Fire of July 2000. Some of the Douglas Firs survived. I didn't see many animal tracks along this trail. There were a couple of track trails that appeared to be mouse sized and another that was coyote sized.

There is a good view of this trail area from a pullover point on the main park road past the trail head. This view shows the two way segment of trail. The trail makes a turn to the right at the far end of this view.

At the parking area of the Montezuma View Point there are good views toward Sleeping Ute Mountain and west toward the Abajo Mountains. My total hike took 1:50 hours for about 3 miles on a 32 F degree morning.