Warner Point

Warner Point is a viewpoint at the end of Warner Point Trail, above Black Canyon. It's reached on foot from High Point parking at the end of South Rim Drive, not from a roadside pullout. Go when you have time for a short hike and want to reach a viewpoint away from the road; the payoff is looking down to the Gunnison River with the rim and mountains stretching beyond it.

The unpaved trail is 0.8 mile each way, or 1.6 miles round trip, and is rated moderate-strenuous. It gets steep in places. Shady benches sit along the way among mountain mahogany, serviceberry, pinyon pine, and juniper. The trail isn't wheelchair accessible, and pets aren't allowed. Pick up a trail guide at High Point Overlook or the South Rim Visitor Center if you'd like help identifying what you see.

Look down into the canyon for the Gunnison River, then turn south toward the San Juan Mountains, Uncompahgre Valley, and Bostwick Park. The northward view reaches the West Elk Mountains. Leave time for both horizons; this isn't a one-direction overlook. For a photo, use the rocky rim or the Warner Point spire in the foreground to give the distant cliffs and river some scale.

As you hike, look toward Montrose for a far-off layer of Mancos Shale. The distant layer can look like sand dunes from here, a surprising shape in the much larger mountain landscape.

The canyon walls expose Precambrian igneous and metamorphic rock nearly two billion years old. The Gunnison River cut down through it; about two million years ago, the Gunnison River began cutting into the uplift and exposing this basement rock. The view is a good place to take in the scale of that long work: old, hard rock below, and a river still far beneath the rim.