Rocky Mountain National Park
This is the first time I’m making an adventure article! My hope is that anyone planning a trip can learn from my family’s thought process and experience to craft their perfect itinerary.
7 days in mid-September
Some things to note:
This adventure was designed for a group of 3 active 20 somethings and 2 ambitious seniors. We love to find trails and activities that are fun for everyone, but sometimes the best trails and viewpoints are only accessible by — as the seniors called us — “the youths.”
RMNP starts off at 7,800 ft elevation, so dedicating a few days to exploring town, taking smaller hikes, or riding the Mountain Coaster are great ways to acclimate for safety. We witnessed multiple people suffering from altitude sickness, one of whom fully passed out and we believe was evacuated to lower ground for safety. Don’t be that person!
You need timed entry to enter the park before between 9am - 2pm and, because most of our interests were on Bear Lake Road, we booked the Timed Entry + Bear Lake Road passes every day. If your timed entry has the Bear Lake Road access granted, you can enter either exactly in your timed entry window or any time after 2pm. If you don’t have that extra access, you can’t enter Bear Lake Road until after 6pm. All that to say that planning seems really important to enjoy the park fully.
Trails
Glacier Gorge to Sky Pond (Hard but ★★★★★)
It is a little longer than the AllTrails listing if you want to get to Sky Pond after Lake of Glass. If you’ve already gone all that way, I say do it!
We did start late and arrived to the top around 5:00pm. This made for beautiful lighting, but didn’t leave too much time to picnic at the top.
There is a scramble before Lake of Glass that might be dangerous depending on your shoe grip. While I was wearing hiking boots, the two other “youths” with me were not and we decided to take it very slow. No injuries or near-accidents were had, but we did cross paths with a group of seniors who warned us about their difficulties, so something to consider!
The view is amazing the whole way up, with yellow aspens putting on a stunning show in mid-September. The trail is very well maintained, but I’d always recommend downloading a trail map for offline use before starting.
The start passes through Alberta Falls which is a great stopping point for anyone who doesn’t want to do the full hike but wants to hike along bright yellow aspens with a waterfall soundtrack.
Alpine Ridge Trail (Medium difficulty because of the ascent, but very short)
This is a short, but steep ascent up to 12,005 feet elevation. The views at the top are panoramic and, because it was raining for us, it was a very moody scene.
To access this trail, you need to take Trail Ridge Road, which is the highest paved road in the United States, reaching an elevation of 12,183 feet. It's open to vehicles from around Memorial Day weekend until the Park Service closes it in the fall and there’s viewpoints every 5 miles or so. This is a staple of the park that you can’t miss!
If you’re thinking about driving up and doing this in your first day in Colorado, don’t! We saw a few people get altitude sickness, one of whom passed out and needed to be evacuated down for safety. We did this after 4 days of acclimation and everyone enjoyed it, though the seniors did take it slow and found it a bit challenging due to strong winds and high elevation.
Bear Lake, Nymph Lake, Dream Lake, and Emerald Lake (Easy to Hard depending on how far you go)
You can take a short walk around each lake before moving on to the next. Because it’s progressive, you can also decide to just do Bear Lake, or just Bear and Nymph, etc.
While the logs at Nymph Lake look so tempting to stand on to get a beautiful glassy photo, take it from the fool who ended up swimming in the mud: your shoes may be grippy, but those logs are more slippy™!
The trail at Emerald also connects to the same trail that can take you to Sky Pond or Alberta Falls, so you really can make this as short or long of a hike as you’d like and still end up in the same place you started.
Sprague Lake (Easy)
This flat walk gives you lovely views of the mountain range at the far end of the lake.
We found brook trout and birds here. We were told this is a popular moose hangout spot, but the only place we saw moose in the park was at Sheeps Lake.
We picnicked here a couple different times because it’s easily accessible, beautiful, and has tables and restrooms.
Cub Lake (Medium)
The flattest trail we did, this also offered a chance to walk through the meadows and, at one point, walk right past an elk that was napping just 20ish feet from the trail but woke up to the sound of hikers. Very cool!
The wildflowers along this trail were also notably beautiful.
Storm Pass (Easy)
On a very windy day (20 mph winds with 40 mph gusts), we opted for the cover of an aptly named connector trail called Storm Pass that can take you in a bunch of different directions, most with tree cover from strong winds.
We explored here for about 3-4 miles, including taking our second tour of Sprague Lake before heading out to go animal watching.
Lodging
RMNP has a lot of great campsites. I’ve camped here before in 2015 and absolutely loved it! Our family prefers to rent homes when we travel to be more comfortable and, if that’s what you’d like to do, staying in Estes Park is a fantastic option! It’s the closest town to the RMNP east entrances and has everything from grocery stores to multiple boba stores—an important note for our fam-bam. As for our choice in specific location, unfortunately our AirBnB had a plumbing emergency 3 days before our arrival. There’s not many options in Estes Park on 2 days notice, so we did end up splurging more to find an alternative (even after the significant discount I earned after 12 hours with customer support). Just something to keep in mind for planning purposes.
Weather
While we got lucky with mostly sunny conditions, there were some rainy moments that seemed to leave as quickly as they arrived. Highs ranged from 65-75 F and lows at night usually hung around 45 F. There were quite a few very windy days (20 mph with gusts up to 40 mph!) and we had to plan our higher elevation hikes around that to stay comfortable. By planning with the weather in mind, we were able to do every hike we wanted to.
Wildlife Highlights
Elk: September is in the midst of elk mating season, which means you can hear bugles everywhere, especially in the meadows. It was a magical soundtrack to our park experience and one of the coolest things we witnessed. If you don’t know what a bugle is, watch Season 1, Episode 2 of Secret World of Sound with David Attenborough. It’s amazing! While we saw male elk practicing their fighting skills a few times, we only saw a fight over a herd of females once — and it was really cool to see! In Moraine Park or by the east entrance, we regularly saw herds of 30+ females with a male elk and up to 5 smaller males trying to make moves where they could. It was an incredible way to end every day in the park.
Moose: While we were told there’s about 3,000 moose in the park right now, we only saw them once at Sheeps Lake. There was a male and a female with a calf playing in the water at dusk. Very cool, just make sure you get there before dusk starts if you want to see them in brighter light.
