Rocky Mountain National Park in Autumn

As I described in my prior post, during the last week of September, my husband and I spent a few days in a lodge in the YMCA of the Rockies in Estes Park, Colorado, to enjoy visiting Rocky Mountain National Park, and to enjoy the park as it began to show off its beautiful fall splendor!

 

We heard that the aspen trees were nearing peak color at the higher elevations inside the park...

...and that fact was delightfully true!

During the two and a half days we spent visiting the park, we experienced a variety of weather, from sun to rain showers, but the fall colors were glorious.

We even saw snow at the highest elevations of the park.

We took some time to enjoy some hikes in different parts of the park.

A short video of some quaking aspen trees in the wind.

A high elevation long-distance view of hills of colorful aspen trees and a thick forest. 

The park is surrounded by Roosevelt National Forest in the north and east, Routt National Forest in the northwest, and Arapaho National Forest in the southwest. Rocky Mountain National Park encompasses approximately 415 square miles (1,075 km2) of land in Colorado's northern Front Range.

We drove on the 48-mile-long Trail Ridge Road (US 34) up into the vast tundra.

Eleven miles of Trail Ridge Road is above the treeline, with an elevation near 11,500 feet, where the park's evergreen forests come to a halt. As it winds across the tundra's vastness, it reaches a high point at 12,183 feet in elevation.  It is America's Highest Continuous Paved Road.

One day of our visit was beautifully sunny, and we took a hike to take advantage of the views from this high elevation.

Please click on the collage to enlarge

The next time we traveled up to the highest point of Trail Ridge Road, it began to snow! We stopped into the Alpine Visitor Center to look at the exhibits.  The Alpine Visitor Center is the highest elevation visitor center in the National Park System at 11,796 feet above sea level.  It is only open seasonally, as heavy snow will soon cover the building, as you can see in the photo above. Trail Ridge Road also closes for the season at a certain elevation, usually from mid-October to mid-May.

The Continental Divide, where streamflows are separated east from west, is crossed at Milner Pass, situated at a surprisingly low elevation of 10,758 feet.

The elk rut season was just beginning, and we saw many elk stags roaming in the meadows. This time, we did not see any moose as we had on our last visit to the park.

The video above shows the distinctive sound an elk stag makes during the rut to attract the elk cows. 

Their bugles can be heard all around the park in the fall!

Every time we visit Rocky Mountain National Park, we experience new beauty! It is one of our favorite places in Colorado, and I hope you enjoyed seeing it this autumn on my blog.

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