Perimeter Trail Overlook

Author's Comments

The Perimeter Trail does not announce itself. You park at Horse Gulch, you start walking, and the town drops away behind you faster than you expect. Within a mile the ridge opens and the Animas Valley spreads out below, with the La Plata Mountains holding the western horizon and Durango itself settling into the cradle of the river. October is when this trail earns its name. The scrub oak goes a particular shade of orange that is hard to describe and harder to photograph well, somewhere between rust and ember, and it carpets the slopes in a way that the ponderosas punctuate rather than interrupt. Late afternoon is the time. The light comes in low from the west and rakes across the oak, and the La Platas catch the last warm light while the valley below is already moving toward shadow. That layering is the photograph. There are several rocky outcrops along the first two miles, and each one frames the view slightly differently. I have my preferences but I will not name them. Part of what makes this trail worth the climb is that you find your own ledge. Bring a headlamp. The return through the scrub oak goes dark earlier than you think, and the trail loses itself in the shadows of the ridge well before the sky does.

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