Recommendations for trails in UT, CO, northern AZ and northern NM

[Nanno]

I'm sorry to hear about your grandfather. It will definitely be getting pretty cold in Colorado by the time you get into late October, but desert areas can be nice to visit during late fall/winter if you don't get too high in elevation, or if you're okay with camping in the cold. The nice thing about hiking in the desert in the winter is there's not usually a lot of snow and even though the temperatures drop a lot at night, it warms up enough during the day to make hiking pleasant. If you come to Colorado in late October you will see a LOT of hunters. I'm not sure about Utah as a hunting state, but here in Colorado we're crawling with them throughout October and November so you're going to see a lot of people, RV's, and ATV's on the trail and you definitely need to wear orange (and make sure your goats wear orange!).