Point Lookout

Switchback up a ridge to an overlook high above the park entrance and the Mancos Valley.

Trail description

Leaving the amphitheater parking lot, the trail crosses a sagebrush meadow as it aims toward a prominent ridge to the northeast. After a few hundred yards, you enter a mix of piñon and junipers, along with scattered groves of Gambel oak, the prevalent tree throughout the campground. If you look west across the valley, you can see the Prater Ridge Trail as it climbs out of the valley.

Soon the trail begins switchbacking up the hillside, climbing in earnest and crossing layers of Point Lookout Sandstone. As you climb, keep an eye out for yucca, Mormon tea, and serviceberry, a bush with rounded, toothed leaves and small white flowers in the spring. Another shrub, mountain mahogany, has fan-shaped leaves with obvious veins and teeth. Ancestral Puebloans used the wood for doorways and roofs on their buildings.

At 0.7 mile, you go over a final sandstone ledge and reach the top of the ridge. A spur trail goes right while the main trail continues along a narrow ridge going northeast towards the point. You soon enter a dense stand of oaks that blocks the view, but as soon as you emerge, a trail to the right takes you to a shelf of solid rock that ends in a sheer cliff with nothing to block the scenery. To the northeast, the La Plata Mountains rise out of the Mancos Valley, while far to the north, Wilson Mountain and Lone Cone Peak (not the small Lone Cone rising above the Morefield Campground) appear on the horizon. To the northwest, the Abajo Mountains rise into the sky above Monticello, Utah, while Sleeping Ute Mountain reclines to the west.

At the base of the cliff, the Visitor and Research Center sits at the beginning of the main road into the park; the road snakes its way through hills of Mancos Shale as it climbs to the top of Mesa Verde. The old entrance road runs along the base of the cliff immediately to the west. That road was abandoned when a tunnel was built in 1957 to make the more reliable entrance road in use today. After relaxing and enjoying the views, return the way you came. 

Directions

Drive up the park entrance road to Morefield Campground and take the main road through the campground to the amphitheater parking lot. The trail leaves from the northeast corner of the lot.