What it's like to travel on the Rocky Mountaineer

This article was produced by National Geographic Traveller (UK).

While some resemble elephantine penises, others are like dizzying whirls of meringue rising from the desert. The one to my left looks uncannily like a piece of fried chicken.

I’m perched on a boulder in Utah’s Arches National Park — a seemingly infinite expanse of red-orange sandstone arches and rocks of varying shapes and sizes. A visit to the park — home to the densest concentration of natural stone arches in the world — is part of the ‘Rockies to the Red Rocks’ itinerary on the Rocky Mountaineer train, a route launched in 2021. It departs from the nearby city of Moab and clicks and clacks its way through hulking canyons, ghost towns and wine regions, ending up in Denver, Colorado. I’m excited for all that awaits me, but as far as passionate biologist and park guide Chris Tull is concerned, it doesn’t get much better than where I’m standing right now.

“It’s a bit like you’ve died and woken up in Wonderland,” he says, gesturing to the almost-spectral landscape around us. “The depth, complexity and nuance of Arches keeps you coming back over and over again.”

The 120sq-mile park is a labyrinth of paths and lookout points and contains more than 2,000 arches; Chris mentions he’s visited the park hundreds of times but has only seen 190 of them. On our morning trip, we spot a good four or five arches and rock formations. There’s a hoodoo (rock pillar) shaped like the Egyptian queen Nefertiti, which tops a weathered mountain that has lasagne-like layers of sedimentary rock in the park’s signature colour of red. And there’s Delicate Arch, a 52ft-tall, wishbone-shaped landmark that features on every licence plate around the state. It’s backdropped by the La Sal Mountains on the distant horizon, reminiscent of the distinctive painting style of landscape artist and TV presenter Bob Ross.

“This place dates back to Jurassic times,” Chris tells me, adjusting his Ray-Bans. “Ten thousand years ago, this land would’ve been a coniferous pine forest; you couldn’t see the desert for the trees. Woolly mammoths, cave bears, giant sloths — they would’ve been roaming all over here.”

As morning slides into afternoon, the clouds start to clear, revealing the snowcapped peaks of La Sal. I take one last look at the phallus and the fried chicken before heading towards Moab — I’ve a train to catch.

Heading east

One hour later, I sink into a marshmallow-soft chair in the Rocky Mountaineer’s glass-domed lounge car as the train pulls away from the station. For the next day and a half, we’ll be chuntering eastward approximately 350 miles, following the serpentine Colorado River upstream. The red sandstone rocks of Utah will morph, mile by mile, into the snow-clad, alpine landscapes of Colorado, the most mountainous state in the country.

We chug along the Cane Creek Subdivision, a sweep of crimson canyons and desolate desert. Leaving my fellow passengers chatting in their seats, I head to the bar. Here I meet 75-year-old host Cheryl Yeats, who’s worked on board since the route launched. She pinballs around the bar as she fixes me her signature vodka gimlet. “I’ve been to 48 out of 50 states, but there’s nothing quite like the Rocky route,” she says as we pass through swathes of golden-brown hinterland towards the Utah-Colorado border. “When you’re approaching Denver, for example, it’s almost like you’re going into Emerald City, the views are just beautiful.”

As I take my first sip of the gimlet, a voice comes over the PA system. “Ladies and gentlemen, we’re now approaching Ruby Canyon,” says London native Jessica Byrne, the main train guide. Within seconds we’re enveloped by prodigious, truffle-like sandstone cliffs. The canyon stretches 25 miles across the state border but, I’m told, the cliffs are only visible from the train or by rafting along the canyon’s river. Sure enough, as we pass a set of colossal, protruding rocks, a solo rafter appears, dwarfed by his surroundings.

Some miles into Colorado, we pass through Palisade, home to the state’s main wine region, where lush vineyards lie beneath towering cliffs, strung along desert valleys. As we head further east, the 11,000ft-high Grand Mesa, the world’s largest flat-topped mountain, slowly comes into view, like a city rising out of the ground. A few miles later, winding north, we catch a glimpse of the town of Parachute, where, in 1904, the infamous outlaw Kid Curry held a conductor at gunpoint after escaping from prison.

It’s one of the final sights of the day. At Glenwood Springs, in the foothills of the Rockies, we disembark and check into a hotel for the night. Drawing the curtains, I spot our train resting at the station, and, in my head, can still hear it clicking and clacking along the tracks.

Pastures new

“This is some of the most beautiful scenery in the entire country,” says Jessica as we travel through Glenwood Canyon, just a few minutes into our journey the following morning. The 1,300ft-high canyon walls, clothed in oak brush trees, tower over our train.

By breakfast, the landscape rolling by is worlds away from the red hues of Utah. The cliffs, a mix of sandstone and Cambrian rock, are cloaked with spruce and chartreuse shrubs. In the distance are the snowy peaks of the Rockies, beneath an isolated group of clouds. The closer we get to Boulder, more and more mounds of snow appear on the ground. We’re on the home run now, passing through small towns and ski resorts. It’s hard to believe we’ve gone from Mars-like scenes to this in just over 24 hours.

As the train make its final approach into Denver, I catch the Emerald City-like views Cheryl mentioned — it looks straight out of The Wizard of Oz. In the gangway I bump into Thomas Frantz, on-board maintenance technician and self-proclaimed train doctor, who helped build some of the cars for the Canadian Rocky Mountaineer. The Denver native oversees everything from getting spare parts to making sure the engine’s working properly.

“I’ve rode this journey 300 times. I know every telephone pole, every boulder, every rock, and I’m still not tired of it,” he says, before a message coming in on one the three walkie talkies attached to his belt interrupts him. “This stuff never gets old, it’s too gorgeous out here.”

His words echo in my head as I clamber down onto the platform in Denver. It’s tempting to get straight back on board, and relive every telephone pole, every boulder and every rock all over again.

Published in the March 2025 issue of National Geographic Traveller (UK).

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