Trail Ridge Road: An All American Experience

Rocky Mountain National Park, CO, USA

Article and photos by Janet Burns

Located in north-central Colorado, Rocky Mountain National Park boasts 415 square miles of pristine wilderness, babbling brooks, dense forests, glassy lakes, prolific wildlife, and glacial-carved mountains capped with snow most of the year. What an inspiring sight it must have been to the first white men who entered this valley and to the Joel Estes family who arrived in these mountains in 1859 where the town of Estes Park, at the park’s eastern entrance, now lies!  

The highlight of the park is Trail Ridge Road, extending 25 miles east-to-west from Estes Park to Grand Lake. Declared an "All-American Road" in 1996, Trail Ridge Road, at its height, curves nomadically across an alpine terrain known as Tundra Curves and at its lowest, wends its way through golden-flowered meadows and grand forests paralleling the Continental Divide. Valley to valley, from Estes Valley to the Kawuneeche Valley, lofty mountains in between, Trail Ridge Road wanders past "working" beaver meadows and valleys that are homes to hundreds of “bugling” elk, through inspiring and awesome panoramas featuring everything from babbling brooks, centuries-old windswept trees, lily-padded and often iced-over lakes, and tundra-carpeted landscapes, so delicate that if damaged would take 500 years to regenerate! Reaching an elevation of 12,183 feet, Trail Ridge Road takes on Tundra Curves like an arctic experience; indeed, one-third of the park's land is up in the alpine tundra. Eight miles of the road wander through the tiny-flowered tundra above the 11,000-foot level, an area that is snow-blanketed almost half of the year. Winds of over 100 miles per hour often whip across these winding roads above the timberline, and when the snows get out of hand, the pass has been known to close down temporarily, even in the midst of summer!

Trail Ridge Road usually opens around Memorial Day after a bewildering six weeks of snow removal, and it closes down sometime before mid-October when the snows once again make the road impassable to all but the snowplows. When the road first opens in the late
spring, banks of snow and ice pillar 15 feet high along the roadside, towering over cars like glimmering granite canyon walls.

Travel trailers and travelers may often have difficulties at these high altitudes. But the pass abounds in scenic overlooks to rest the laboring rig or the breathless driver, and it is on these scenically located “pulloffs” that Trail Ridge Road has so much to boast. Oftentimes one must walk well out of view of the road to see all that the area has to offer. From the Forest Canyon Overlook, one can peer down into a lush, green glen and across that valley toward snow-covered, glacier-cut volcanic mountains bespeckled with tiny, iced-over lakes that have never seen a human being along their banks. From the Rainbow Curve Overlook, the traveler can see down and across into Horseshoe Park, dotted with ponds along whose edges Big Horn Sheep graze. Every morning and evening, the elk come down to graze, and in the fall, they can be heard across the valleys as they bugle to their mating partners. Off in another direction from this overlook, one can view Endovalley's alluvial fan that was created in 1982 when the Lawn Lake earthen dam above the park broke and flooded the valley and the town of Estes Park. And from the Many Parks Curve Overlook, one can scan the valleys off to the other side of the park and see Long's Peak looming over 14,250 feet high over campgrounds and hiking trails.

En route to the top of the world, one must remember that there are no gas stations between Estes Park and Grand Lake and few restroom facilities along the way.  And often, those few are closed down because of lack of running water. These obstacles notwithstanding, this drive through glacial-cut mountains such as the Mummy Range and the Never-Summer Range is breathtaking and awe-inspiring. Near the summit of Fall River Pass, elevation 11,796 feet, is the Alpine Visitors' Center and a quaint little coffeehouse where one can sip on hot chocolate and shop for all sorts of souvenirs from Colorado and beyond.

Boasting numerous ecosystems, Rocky Mountain National Park, named an International Biosphere Reserve in 1976, is home to foothills and mountains resplendent with towering ponderosa pine, quaking aspen, and juniper. The north slopes are forested with Douglas fir and the stream sides are bordered with blue spruce and lodge pole pine.  The meadows and glades are carpeted with variegated wildflowers and the sub-alpine regions are home to the Engelmann spruce, the sub-alpine fir, the Colorado columbine, and age-old windswept trees. Alpine areas are carpeted with delicate tundra plants, one-fourth of which may also be found in arctic zones.

I have been up and down this road over 250 times, and it looks different each and every time. The weather is so wild and varies so much that the pass never looks the same twice. The last time I was in Rocky Mountain, I went up the road on four occasions: once, in the morning when the sun was just peeking over the mountains which were aglow with a golden shimmer; again in late morning when the road wended its way through thick clouds that broke open only long enough to reveal mountain peaks poking through the mist; at noon, just after the clouds had broken and in time to reveal distant snow-capped mountain ranges one hundred miles away; and near sunset when the tundra was painted with an orange glimmer referred to as the "alpine glow." I hope you have an opportunity to enjoy this highest continuously-paved automobile road in the States. It is definitely an experience that you will never forget!

Janet Burns is editor of ColoradoForTravelers.com, AboutLatinLanguage.com, and Classroom-Activities.com. She is a retired Latin, English, and Russian teacher and travels the American West extensively.