Round Trip Distance: 1.1 miles
Difficulty: Easy
Elevation: 7920 - 7984 feet
Cellphone: 0-3 bars
Time: 1 hr. 30 mins.
Trailhead: Ancient Valley Interpretive Site
Fee: none
Attractions: Scenic geology, rockshelter
The Ancient Valley Interpretive Site is located in the Elephant Rocks area between La Garita and Del Norte, Colorado. Besides some scenic geology we found a rock shelter in the area that had some appeared from a distance to have some black charcoal drawings.
To get to the main trailhead enter Ancient Valley Interpretive Site into your driving app. The turnoff is 7.1 miles south of La Garita on CR 38A. The trailhead is a 4 tenths of a mile past the turnoff where there are a half dozen interpretive kiosks that mostly mention the La Garita Super Volcano that exploded 27 million years ago and the Ice Age wooly mammoths that once roamed the valley.
Further up the road from the Interpretive Site we noticed a rock shelter that had signs restricting access.
From around the perimeter we were able to use our zoom lens to get some closeups. We noticed the soot covered roof of the rockshelter and what looked like some black charcoal pictographs.
Deeper inside the rockshelter it looked like a comfortable cave.
Even further up the road we noticed a unique rock formation that we dubbed 'Donut Rock'. The hole in the lower boulder doesn't go all the way through the rock. Perhaps at one time the rocks were joined.
While in the area we hiked what we labeled as Loop 1 to see what else we could find. The hike was pleasant enough but didn't yield any new discoveries.
We had read previous to our visit that there were cliff dwellings and rock art in the area. It might be that we missed them or that the person that made that claim didn't know the difference between a rock shelter and a cliff dwelling. We left a lot of area unexplored on this trip so there is hope yet.
If you would like to see the Ancient Valley for yourself then all you have to do is 'Take a hike'.
