Round Trip Distance: 0.5 miles
Difficulty: Easy
Elevation: 7957 - 8016 feet
Cellphone: 0 bars
Time: 1 hr.
Trailhead: 37.84328, -106.28571
Fee: none
Attractions: pictographs, Madonna Mural
Penitente Canyon is located west of La Garita, Colorado in the BLM Penitente Canyon Recreation Area. The canyon gets its name from a religious brotherhood calling themselves Los Hermanos Penitente who came to the area in the 1880's. In the mid 1980's 3 members of the group painted a mural of the Virgin of Guadalupe high on the canyon wall. Hundreds of years prior to that Native People painted their own pictographs in the canyon.
