Never Summer Mountains is a range of lofty peaks sitting at the western edge of the Park, rising 3,500 feet above the valley below, running north to south. Its Eastern flank creates the Kawuneeche Valley, the birthplace of the North Fork of what was once known as the Grand River but is now the Colorado River. Many of the peaks in this range were named after cloud types: Nimbus, Stratus, Cirrus, Cumulus.
The Grand Ditch was built on its eastern slopes to catch the water from the creeks draining into the Colorado River, diverting it to Long Draw Reservoir on the east side of the Continental Divide, and then on to the farm lands on the east plains.
This range has a complex geology due to the mixture of rock types. Some of the youngest rocks (100 million years old) in the Park form a crust on the summit of Mt. Cumulus that contains sea shell fossils in the old Pierre Shale.
The Arapaho Indians called this range, the "Never No Summer" (translated from their language) range because of the slow melting of summer snows. Since it was not appropriate to name a mountain range with a double negative, the current name was adopted. This range was added to the Park in 1929.
