Thenaturalmedic Adventures
Hello there, and thanks so much for joining us here! You are probably wondering what this podcast is all about? In this podcast, we will talk about all sorts of outdoor adventures, but primarily, for now, we will focus on hiking and backpacking. No other outdoor adventure is so accessible to so many people! So please join us as we talk about how to hike/backpack and learn how to hike any length trail from your local neighborhood parks to those long trails such as the Appalachian and others worldwide! Remember... "in every walk with nature; one receives far more than he seeks... - John Muir " See you on the trail!
Thenaturalmedic Adventures
Walking Mosca Pass: Fall Color, Quiet Creeks, And A Slice Of Colorado History
Note: A video version is available on YouTube. Please send us a Message!
Sand that moves like a stormy sea, a creek that sings under aspen fire, and a ridge that widens the world—this Mosca Pass hike delivers more than a modest mile count suggests. We start at Great Sand Dunes National Park and Preserve, trace Mosca Creek through shifting meadows and timber, and climb a steady grade toward a saddle lined in late-September gold. Along the way, we pause at a rock marker to unpack pioneer footsteps and revisit Zebulon Pike’s vivid line about dunes as waves, then follow the faint bones of an old toll road that once pulled wagons over the range before a 1911 washout rewrote the route.
At the top, Mosca Pass opens into color: aspens flaring across the ridge, a meadow catching light, and the San Luis Valley stretching under a high, clean sky. We trade route notes—3.7 miles to the pass, about 850 feet of gain, two hours at a leisurely pace—and share small, practical wins like letting the creek set your rhythm and stopping often to look back at the dunes below. The contrast is the point here. The desert gives way to forest, history brushes against wilderness, and a gentle trail still finds a way to feel expansive. On the descent, an abandoned truck stirs a round of theories, and the old road’s profile tells a quiet story about water and time.
If you’re scouting Colorado hikes with fall color, moderate effort, and real payoff, Mosca Pass belongs on your list. Come for the views and stay for the textures: the hiss of meadow grass, the cool draw by the creek, the sudden hush in the trees. Watch, share your best guess about the truck’s fate, and tell us your favorite shoulder-season hike. If you enjoy the journey, tap 'subscribe,' hit the thumbs up, and share this episode with a friend who needs an easy win with a panoramic finish.
Hi there. Craig the Natural Medic hiking on the Mosca Pass Trail. Great sand dunes. National Park and Preserve. Outside of Alamosa, Colorado. It's a 3.7 mile hike to the top of Mosca Pass. Hope you'll join me as we go up. There's a tablet marker on this rock here. Talks about the pioneers who trekked over the Mosca Pass to settle here in the San Luis Valley. And Lieutenant Zebulon Pike was one of the first Americans to record the impressions. He described them in his journal as appearing exactly as a sea in a storm except as to color. Definitely as we climb higher, we're gonna see some fall colors starting to appear as it's late September here in Colorado. Should be nice to see. About a mile, two tips, mile and a quarter into the hike. So getting there slowly. Let's keep going. Looking back from here, you can definitely see the crater San Luis Valley, or a lot of it, and in the foreground here, you can see the dunes. Pretty cool. Hey, if you're liking this video, make sure to give it a thumbs up. And that gets out to other people. Now back to the video. At about the two mile mark, going up a little bit over halfway to the top. Done about 850 feet of climbing. Gradual climbing, not too bad. But make sure and stop and check out your scenery. You're following Moscow Creek, pretty much your entire journey. It's flowing nicely today. And look at this up here. More foliage turning fall colors. Let's keep going. Got a wide variety of terrain and vegetation throughout your trail. More of an open meadow here with some forest up ahead. Pretty cool. Getting close to the end here. About a mile to go. Just exited out of the wilderness portion of the National Preserve at Great Sand Dunes. Now the trail has kind of changed to more of a road. Was said that Mosca Pass used to be a toll road. And people were coming to settle this side of the valley. And let's see why. Wow. It's really pretty up there. And if you see those aspens on top of that ridge changing colors, there's a big kind of meadow down a little bit below it. And of course the aspens close by are also changing colors. Man, what a beautiful time to be up here. Alright, so what you see before you is Mosca Pass. This is the top here in the National Park and Preserve. It's like a little signage area right there. Those folks are eating. That's technically Mosca Pass there, but man, look at this beautiful view. All the beautiful colors. Wow. So beautiful. What a beautiful view of the pass. I think it took about two hours to get to the top here. Probably won't take quite as long, maybe about an hour, hour twenty to get down. Look forward to that. Meet you on the way down. Washed out in 1911. And then they did not resume caring for the road. But you can see right here the profile of the slope. Let's continue down the trail. This way. My impression was that all of this part of the park was in the wilderness area, but I guess not. There's the sign, I'm just passing it. So I go back into the wilderness, part of the park. Shouldn't be too big of a deal to go back down. So let's do that. There's an old truck here. Considering this area became a park in the 1920s. It's pretty old. But what happened? The driver beer off the road on purpose to try to avoid a toll? Or were there flood waters? I mean, we'll never know. But what do you think? Let me know your guesses in the comments below. Well, I hope you enjoyed that video. It was a good hike up to the top of Mosca Pass. Not too hard of a trail. Lots of beautiful scenery and definitely different than the sand dunes below in the main part of the park. I highly recommend you do this hike up if you like uh nice forest scenery and mountains and creeks and streams and that kind of stuff. And of course, right now, when we did it, beautiful fall colors. If you like this video, make sure to give it a thumbs up. Think about subscribing to the channel if you enjoyed seeing this. And if you want to see some more stuff, check out one of these videos right here. See you out there on the trail. Bye bye.
