Trail Drama Continues At Palo Duro Canyon; Closures And Openings

It's been a weird summer at Palo Duro Canyon. It's been a year of ups and downs regarding trail closures. The rain dumped in the area has led to several park alerts regarding closed trails. Just when the trails open back up, another round of rain hits, and the gates are closed again. A recent update from the park had good news and bad news for hikers.

Palo Duro Canyon - The Good News Regarding Trails

On July 13, a park alert was issued regarding the trails at Palo Duro Canyon. The good news was that more of the trails were opened. Recently, we've seen a lot of partial openings. It was exciting to see the word "open" in a park alert without the word "partial" in front of it.

When the park closes the trails, it's to protect the trail and us. It can be hazardous to us to hike on the trails after heavy rain, and if we hike on wet trails, we can cause a lot of damage. It's nice to see that some of the trails are doing well and are back to being completely open.

Palo Duro Canyon - The Bad News Regarding Trails

The park alert went on to list trails that are still closed. I'm really beginning to wonder if we'll see all the trails open at the same time this summer. It's been wild.

The trails that are currently closed are:

• Rojo Grande
• Cottonwood
• Sunflower
• Juniper Riverside

I suppose we should be grateful that it is a smaller list than what we've been seeing. We should also be thankful that some of the most popular trails aren't on that list. Fingers crossed we see these trails open up before our next round of storms in the panhandle. Let's get all the trails open before summer ends.