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Kodel's Canyon K2

Rating: 
Round Trip Distance: 1.6 miles
Difficulty: Easy
Elevation: 4517 - 4619 feet
Cellphone: 3-5 bars
Time: 1 hr.
Trailhead: Kodel's Canyon
Fee: none
Attractions: Connecting route




The K2 trail is located in the Kodel's Canyon Area of the McInnis Canyons National Conservation Area near Grand Junction and Fruita, Colorado. The trail begins near the Kodel's Canyon trailhead and ends at the midpoint of the Kodel's Canyon K4 trail. Enroute it intersects with the K1 and K7 trails as well as sharing a junction with an unofficial spur of the K3 trail. The K2 trail serves mainly as a connecting route to some of the other trails in the Kodel's Canyon trail system.


The Kodel's Canyon trailhead is south of the town of Fruita across Highway 340 from Dinosaur Hill. The trailhead amounts to a parking area in the barditch of the highway. A restroom is available across the road at Dinosaur Hill.


Follow the trail that heads due west from the parking area up a small hill. After rounding the first bend in the trail at a fence corner the K2 trail begins along the right fork of the trail.


The trail heads in the general direction of Kodel's Canyon as it starts out.


Just past the quarter mile point K2 rejoins the K1 trail. The unofficial spur of the K3 trail is directly across the K1 trail at this intersection.


K2 shares routes with the K1 trail as it drops over the side of the hill and enters the main wash of Kodel's Canyon.


Once in the bottom of the wash the K1 branches off and heads up the wash while the K2 trail continues straight across the wash where it climbs up a little draw to regain the higher ground.


The next stage of the trail is an easy stroll across a sandy flat.


Just past the half mile point the K2 trail meets up with the K7 trail. After crossing the K7 trail the marker designates the next section of trail as a branch of the K4 trail. If you continue hiking for about 2 tenths of a mile to the main K4 trail the marker there designates that section of trail as part of the K2. Toss a coin if you will but we drew up our map and gave the short stretch of trail to the K2.


If you continue hiking you will indeed end up at the K4 where you can take the left fork and follow it to the K1 or the right fork and end up at the K8 near where the K12 trail begins. The K4 also crosses the K5 trail going to the right even though we didn't show that in this picture.


Over the years the number of wildflowers in the Kodel's Canyon area seems to gradually increase as people stay on the designated trails and the surrounding areas are able to recover from past grazing activity. Some of the varieties that you can expect to see when they are in season are pale evening primrose, such as these, scarlet globemallow, milkvetch, sego lily, paintbrush, western peppergrass, claretcup and prickly pear cactus, princess plume, and yellow sundrops that are pretty spectacular when they are in bloom.


The Kodel's Canyon K2 trail gets a lot of use by hikers, trail runners and horseback riders that are taking advantage of the various trails in the area. One hike that people seem to like is to take the K2 to the K4 and follow that to the K1 and then either follow the K1 or K7 back to the K2 and then to the trailhead. There are enough different trails in the area that there is no reason to keep hiking the same route every time out. If you would like to see it for yourself then all you have to do is 'Take a hike'.