• View towards Split Mountain inside Dinosaur National Monument

    Dinosaur

    National Monument CO,UT

Island Park Trail

Rocky outrcrop with juniper trees.

NPS PHOTO/Mike Weinstein

The Island Park trail offers solitude and a good taste of Dinosaur's outstanding geology.

Length: 16 miles round trip. Not a loop.

Difficulty: Moderate to Difficult.

Trailhead locations: 1) At Ruple Ranch, a 30-mile drive on paved and dirt roads north of the Quarry Visitor Center; 2) Trailhead location for Jones Hole Trail.

Brochure: None.

Description: This hike takes you through a diversity of scenery, including the multi-hued panaroma of Rainbow Park, sandstone knobs (pictured at left), the desert shrub community and sandstone canyons.

Special considerations: There is no shade except for the Ely Creek drainage. The trail is faint and hard to follow in places. Routefining skills and ability to use a map and compass are important if you plan to hike this trail. A detour down Sage Creek will take you to the dramatic upturned rock layers of the Island Park Fault. For maps, use the USGS 7.5-minute quadrangles for Island Park, Utah, and Jones Hole, Utah.

Did You Know?

Picture of mormon cricket perched on a blade of grass.

Mormon crickets are wingless grasshoppers that swarm across roads through the summer in the western United States. These flightless insects can form such large swarms that the road appears to move and change colors where they cross.