The Rocky Mountains

Our last blog finished with us exploring South Dakota. Next stop on our road trip is Colorado. We hope to explore its four National Parks and hopefully cross a number of its famous mountain passes before they shut for winter.

On the way south, we traveled through Nebraska. Mel can only pronounce this state doing her best Miss Congeniality impression. If you know you know, if you don’t you haven’t missed out but this is how Mel swears she learnt her US states 24 years ago!

We stopped briefly at Scotts Bluff, a National Monument in Nebraska which served as an important landmark for travellers of the Oregon, California and Mormon trails on their journey’s west. It was nice to break up the long journey and stretch our legs.

Rocky Mountain National Park

We last visited the park in April 2018, and did as much exploring as we could with tons of snow and limited road access. We were looking forward to visiting new parts of the park and getting in some high altitude hiking.

Visiting in late October means the park is prepping for winter and the first big snow storm. This meant all the National Park and nearby private campgrounds had already shut for the season. We therefore stayed just outside the park boundary in motels both on the east side in Estes Park and on the west side in Grand Lake. These came with heating and endless hot water. Which were much appreciated after long days exploring and freezing temperatures overnight.

Hiking at high altitude feels more challenging. We had hoped after a couple of weeks of traveling and staying at higher altitude that our body’s would have adapted, but apparently not. Portland is < 500ft above sea level after all. That said we managed to clock a fair few miles in and around the park, just at a much slower pace…

Hiking Inside the Park

We explored a series of famous lakes - Bear Lake, Nymph Lake, Dream Lake, Emerald Lake and Lake Haiyaha over 7.8 miles with a 1,425 ft elevation gain. We made this route up ourselves meaning we could join all the lakes into one hike. This was an epic day with an added snow storm as we were descending from the highest point which felt almost Christmassy albeit bloody freezing!

Lumpy Ridge to Gem Lake - 1.8 miles up, 1,080 ft elevation gain. We didn’t start this hike until after 4pm, so we had Gem lake completely to ourselves, and saw some fantastic evening colours on our way back down even if we arrived back at the car after sunset.

Hiking Outside the Park

Cathedral Lake - 2.7 miles up, 2,070 ft elevation gain. Located just 20 minutes outside of Aspen, this is a beautiful alpine lake situated just under 12,000ft. We ended up above the snow line which led to epic views on the way up and down but made the switchbacks tricky towards the end as they were covered in snow and ice. So much so, Mel decided to break in her new sky blue hiking trousers/pants we had purchased the day before, by sliding back down 0.15 miles of switchbacks on her backside. Safe to say next time we’ll be packing our crampons (that were in the car)!

B&B to Reiling Dredge to Minnie Mine - On the outskirts of Breckenridge we did a short ~3mile hike around some abandoned mines. We saw the remnants of Gold, Silver, Lead and Zinc Mines scatted across the mountain side and into the valley. Some of these structures were still standing, others didn’t look so good… After this hike, we found a fantastic cafe with so many gluten free options, Mel was so excited, we brought half the collection of cakes and cookies they had!!

Mountain Passes

We have been using ‘the best USA road trips’ guidebook as inspiration to help plan our route criss-crossing the Rockys. So far we have been lucky enough to drive over two of Colorado’s iconic mountain passes.

Trail Ridge Road - Takes you from one side of the National Park to the other. We began with beautiful sunshine and by the time we got to the top, we were fully in the clouds and fog and our visibility was down to a couple of car lengths. The peak of the pass is close to Alpine visitor center which had already closed for the season. We stopped anyway but the mist was so thick you couldn’t even see the visitor center from the car park!

Independence Pass - It’s ~100miles south of the National Park and close to Colorado’s super famous ski resorts of Aspen and Vail. We had much better weather here, stopping for a photo at the summit in puffer jackets and woolly hats, with a dusting of snow on the ground. We descended a few thousand feet and found a camp spot for the evening, hoping we wouldn’t freeze as we were still at ~10,000ft of elevation.

What’s Next

On to Colorado’s other three National Parks of Black Canyon of the Gunnison, Mesa Verde and Great Sand Dunes. These will be the first time we have visited any of these, so we’re excited to explore and travel over some more mountain passes on the way. I’m sure we’ll have a few adventures to break up the journey too.