How I Hiked 100 Miles in Rocky Mountain National Park in 10 Days

I just got back from a month in Colorado, and what a lot of great scenery we saw! Our first order of business on the trip was to spend 10 days in Rocky Mountain National Park, hiking whatever trails we thought might be scenic given the weather. We ended up hiking almost 110 miles in the park, including a few off-trail adventures. I don/t guarantee we caught all of the best hikes in Rocky Mountain, but they’re definitely most of the best!

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Without further ado, here are the hikes I took, and whether I think they’re worth hiking. Enjoy!

How I Hiked Over 100 Miles in Rocky Mountain National Park in 10 Days

Allenspark to Calypso Cascades & Ouzel Falls

We arrived at the park a couple of hours before our timed reservation from the campground reservation kicked in (1pm), so we started out near (but not at) the Wild Basin area in the Allenspark neighborhood. There’s only space for about four cars to park along the side of the road on the very border of the park, but we were able to hike to the two waterfalls – with significant elevation loss/gain, but some nice views. And while Calypso Cascades was pretty disappointing, at least Ouzel Falls was impressive.

Total Miles: 8.5

Hike Rating: 3/5 stars

Gem Lake & the Balanced Rock

The weather wasn’t supposed to be great on our first full day in the park, so we hiked up to Gem Lake en route to the Balanced Rock. The lake itself isn’t all that exciting, but the views on the way up are pretty awesome. And the rock is neat! I also tried to hike over to MacGregor Falls, but a thundershower sent us packing back to the van.

Total Miles: 12.0

Hike Rating: 3/5 stars

Alberta Falls, Glacier Knobs, Lake Haiyaha, and Dream Lake

Again, the weather was predicted as iffy, so we started with the waterfall, then hiked the trailless scrambles up the Glacier Knobs with incredible views of the Glacier Gorge area. We finished off the loop with the lovely Lake Haiyaha and a short spur off to Dream Lake (wrong time of day for beauty, but still nice).

Total Miles: 9.7

Hike Rating: 3/5 stars for Alberta Falls, 4/5 stars for the Glacier Knobs, 5/5 stars for Lake Haiyaha & Dream Lake

Lion Lakes & Snowbank Lake

Once again, the weather wasn’t predicted to be very good (this is sounding like a familiar theme?), but a friend had highly recommended the Lion Lakes hike to me. So we hid out the first set of rain showers and walked through the second, snapping pictures whenever the sun came out. While most of the hike was in the forest, once you burst through the treeline, the views were excellent!

Total Miles: 15.7

Hike Rating: 4/5 stars

Mount Ida

Some good weather was finally heading our way (so they said!), and I bravely set out on the most amazing hike in the park (or so people told me). The views are constant and amazing as soon as you break treeline (which isn’t that long into the hike). Now if only the wind hadn’t been gale-force… we used every layer of clothing we had on us and reveled in the views with chattering teeth!

Total Miles: 10.6

Hike Rating: 5/5

Flattop Mountain to Gabletop Mountain

Our one truly nice day in the park! And we used it well! We had visited Flattop Mountain once before back in 2010, but that time, we had climbed Hallett Peak, and this time, we wanted to go the other direction across Flattop Mountain and over to some of the peaks along the rim. Well, the peaks didn’t have anywhere near as good views as the rim, itself, but it was still an amazing day with incredible views!

Total Miles: 13.75

Hike Rating; 6/5

The Loch, Andrew’s Tarn & Glacier, Lake of Glass, and Sky Pond

Talk about a beautiful hike! The Loch is simply lovely, though the hike up to Andrew’s Tarn and Glacier was steep to the point where I wondered if it was truly an official trail. Climbing Timberline Falls to access the other two lakes was sketchy to the point where I’d call it a Class 4 scramble, but hey, if you can get up the falls, the two lakes are gorgeous!

Total Miles: 10.75

Hike Rating: 5/5 for The Lock, 4/5 for Andrew’s Tarn/Glacier, and 5/5 for Skye Pond/Lake of Glass

Alluvial Fan Trail & Horseshoe Falls

The next day promised to be rainy, so we decided to drive the Fall River Road and do short hikes. Our first stop was the Alluvial Fan Trail. It’s really a sweet little hike. When we got to the waterfall, I started following a social trail up the river, even though I was wearing hiking sandals. Well, we made it up quite a ways, and the waterfall just kept going, and going, and going up the canyon! Chalk one up for the sandals which did much better at scrambling than I would have guessed. I still put on boots for the next hike, just in case!

Total Miles: 1.75

Hike Rating: 4/5

Chasm Falls

We kept driving up the Fall River Road to Chasm Falls. Short and sweet!

Total Miles: 0.15

Hike Rating: 2/5

Ute Trail

The Fall River Road was very pretty. And since it wasn’t raining yet (anymore?), we figured we’d hike the Ute Trail from the Trail Ridge Road for old time’s sake (I first hiked it in 1997, and I last hiked it in 2010). I’d forgotten just how beautiful this part of the Ute Trail is… even in the middle of a downpour… oops! It was the only time on the trip where we were thoroughly drenched!

Total Miles: 4.4

Trail Rating: 5/5

MacGregor Falls

Once again, the weather report didn’t look very sunny, so we figured a waterfall hike was in order. We actually had quite a bit of sun on our way to and from the falls – while the falls is nice, the real gem is in the views and rock formations while walking through the meadows to get there. We even saw some elk sparring.

Total Miles: 6.8

Trail Rating: 3/5

Upper Beaver Meadows

I use AllTrails ratings a lot to help me choose which hikes to do when I have limited time. Well, this one steered me wrong. There was simply nothing about this hike to make it into a 4.8 star rating. Oh, well. I expect the views are better when the mountains still have snow in the spring/early summer.

Total Miles: 2.2

Trail Rating: 2/5

Mills Lake, Black Lake, Green Lake, and Blue Lake

On our final day in the park, we headed up Glacier Gorge again, this time to the gorgeous Mills Lake (or maybe it was just the morning reflections?) From there, we continued up a pleasant trail with nice views to Black Lake… then up a crazy, might-as-well-be-social trail up to Green Lake, and down to Blue Lake! The meadows and views near Green and Blue Lakes were some of the best I saw in the park, even if we had to hide from about three rainstorms along the way, and the trail was… well… let’s just say I was glad to have a map. I will be returning some day to hike Frozen Lake, as well!

Total Miles: 13.4

Trail Rating: 5/5

And that’s how I hiked 109 miles in Rocky Mountain National Park in 10 days, despite not very good weather! (I hear it’s usually better in September… oh, well.)

Someone told me that most visitors in the fall come for the colors in the aspens or for the elk rut. We saw both, but I also enjoyed the quieter trails (relatively speaking… there were still a lot of people on most of the trails!) because so few of the visitors are out hiking much beyond the road.

My Logistics in Rocky Mountain National Park

We opted to stay at campgrounds inside the park (gasp! We actually paid for campgrounds!) Our first week was at Aspenglen Campground, a really nice, quiet place to sleep. The park only allows visitors to stay a week in any given campground, so for our last two nights, we booked a site at Moraine Park – a much less pleasant experience, with sites on top of each other and a very, very long walk to the nearest restroom (which was a pit toilet!)

The good thing about staying at either of these two campgrounds (or Glacier Gorge, which was closed for the season) is that we didn’t have to worry about timed entry; our campsite reservation got us both into the park and down the Bear Lake Road (Timed Entry and Timed Entry+). We could get in anytime after 1pm on the first day of our reservation, and it was good through the end of our reservation, including the entire day we left the campground.

In general, we got up 5-5:30am, immediately drove to our trailhead (so we could get a parking space), ate breakfast at the trailhead, took our hike, and returned to the campground so we could be in bed by 8pm – remember, I’m from the East Coast, so our days ran from 7am to 10pm ET! I’m not sure if this schedule would work in the summer, but in September, it was a great way to make sure we saw what we wanted to see without having to take a shuttle bus (except one day when we were late and couldn’t get a parking spot at Glacier Gorge – but not getting a parking place at Glacier Gorge almost goes without saying).

More Hiking in Colorado

Many years ago, I wrote a book about hiking in Colorado – and it still has some fantastic scenery in it! Buy your copy here.