The Rockies
As you can see from the photos - The Rocky Mountains are amazing. They stretch all the way from British Columbia in Canada down to New Mexico. However we stayed in the official RM National Park which is just north west of Denver, Colorado. We camped in Estes Park - a town similar to Jindabyne in that it is the gateway to the NP. The cool thing about Estes is that there a full rivers running all the way through the town. They would make our poor Murray choke with jealousy! I’m so used to seeing dried up creeks or lame little streams and couldn’t help thinking they must have had a lot of rain even though this was normal!
I have to admit it. I was freaking out about the bears. I jokingly asked the lady at the front desk if there were bears around the campsite only looking for the comfort of a ‘no’ to get rid of my fears. However, the answer was a blunt ‘yes’ followed by ‘lock your food in your vehicle in air tight containers.’ Ugh.
But waking up with the views we had made up for the uneasy thoughts floating in the back of my mind. These mountains are GIGANTIC. Estes Park alone is sitting at around 8000ft an the base of our hiking (Bear Lake - ugh) was at 9000ft.
The first day we ambitiously hiked Flattop Mountain (peaking at 12324ft). It was absolutely amazing. We are in the middle of summer and snow is still clinging to the ground like stone. We reached above the tree line (beyond where there isn’t enough oxygen for trees to grow) before midday - which was a comfort because each day a storm roles in around 1-2pm creating lightening (people have been killed above the tree line during these storms). So we enjoyed the sights while chewing on gummy bears for a little while then headed back down to Bear Lake. My legs were wobbling by the time we reached the car but it was incredible.
We hiked a little more over the following days, mainly to see the pristine blue lakes sitting around Bear Lake area. The map below shows the lakes we saw (Bear Lake, Nymph Lake, Dream Lake, Lake Haiyaha and Emerald Lake) and just above is the hike to Flattop.
button
