To reach Trinchera, you can fly into Denver and hop on a quick regional flight to San Luis Valley Regional Airport. From there, it’s about a 35-minute drive before you pull up to the front gate. (Don’t skip the frosty coconut water waiting in the car, intended to help acclimate to the altitude.) I also suggest rolling your windows down for the final stretch, to breathe in the fragrant sage and admire the quaking aspen trees fluttering in the wind.
Two taxidermy head-butting big-horn sheep serve as the welcome crew to the grand hall. They are frozen, mid-leap on the mantle of a freestanding ceiling-to-floor stone fireplace that wraps around to the other side. The Southwestern interiors are the handiwork of Jet Zarkadas and Jen Wilson of Los Griegos Studio, who have achieved a fabulous balance between feeling immersive and avoiding western clichés.
Photo: Trinchera Reserve & Lodge
Every day (every minute!) I discover something new, as one might in a cabinet of curiosities or natural history museum. Intricately beaded moccasins framed in the hallway, a typewriter that once belonged to Ernest Hemingway, canvas lampshades depicting galloping horses, a glass-top coffee table containing a raised terrain map of the entire reserve. And an incredible collection of Zane Grey books. “We combed used bookstores all over the West to compile the appropriate books, including the Zane Greys,” Zarkadas tells me. “He was the quintessential western writer, and an avid fisherman, and we have one of his fishing poles at the entry to the main lodge.”
Each corner, nook, and cranny feels like an authentic homage to the landscape and its heritage. This extends to the owner’s private art collection hung throughout the lodge, which includes several pieces by the legendary Taos Society of Artists, and even an N.C. Wyeth painting that was on the cover of Scribner’s Magazine (which now suspends majestically above a fireplace).
