Kent Dannen - Best Hikes Rocky Mountain National Park: A Guide to the Parks Greatest Hiking Adventures

Guidebooks by Kent Dannen are the standard reference for the trails of Rocky Mountain National Park. He has hiked every trail in the park and those in this guide many times. Nonetheless, these trails never get old or fail to offer something new each time he travels them. He began his professional guiding activities as hike master and naturalist for the YMCA of the Rockies and has led hundreds of hikes covering thousands of miles.

A former contributing editor of Backpacker Magazine, Kent freelances as a writer and photographer. He has taught classes in nature photography, bird identification, and the history of wildlife in America for the National Wildlife Federation and Canadian Wildlife Federation from coast to coast. He also is a recipient of the US Department of Agriculture Certificate of Appreciation for his outstanding volunteer services in developing educational materials that help manage and protect the Indian Peaks Wilderness.

Kent has written four other guidebooks: Short Hikes in Rocky Mountain National Park, Best Easy Day Hikes Rocky Mountain National Park, Hiking Rocky Mountain National Park (10th edition), and Rocky Mountain Wildflowers. He lives near Allenspark, Colorado.

HELP US KEEP THIS GUIDE UP TO DATE

Every effort has been made by the author and editors to make this guide as accurate and useful as possible. However, many things can change after a guide is publishedtrails are rerouted, regulations change, facilities come under new management, and so forth.

We welcome your comments concerning your experiences with this guide and how you feel it could be improved and kept up to date. While we may not be able to respond to all comments and suggestions, well take them to heart, and well also make certain to share them with the author. Please send your comments and suggestions to the following address:

FalconGuides

Reader Response/Editorial Department

246 Goose Lane

Guilford, CT 06437

Or you may e-mail us at: editorial@falcon.com

Thanks for your input, and happy trails!

An imprint of Rowman & Littlefield

Falcon, FalconGuides, and Outfit Your Mind are registered trademarks of Rowman & Littlefield.

Distributed by NATIONAL BOOK NETWORK

Copyright 2015 by Rowman & Littlefield

Maps by Melissa Baker and Alena Pearce Rowman & Littlefield

All photos by Kent Dannen

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the publisher, except by a reviewer who may quote passages in a review.

British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Information Available

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Dannen, Kent.

Best hikes Rocky Mountain National Park : a guide to the parks greatest hiking adventures/ Kent Dannen.

pages cm

Includes index.

ISBN 978-1-4930-0813-1 (pbk.)ISBN 978-1-4930-1477-4 (e-book) 1. HikingColoradoRocky Mountain National ParkGuidebooks. 2. TrailsColoradoRocky Mountain National ParkGuidebooks. 3. Rocky Mountain National Park (Colo.)Guidebooks. I. Title.

GV199.42.C62 R6224

796.5109788'69dc23

2015009922

The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of American National Standard for Information SciencesPermanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI/NISO Z39.48-1992.

The author and Globe Pequot Press assume no liability for accidents happening to, or injuries sustained by, readers who engage in the activities described in this book.

To my parents, who showed me ancient paths: Mary Ellen and Dwight Dannen

Ask for the ancient paths
where the good way is; and walk in it
and find rest for your souls.

Jeremiah 6:16

The Bierstadt Lake Trail climbs amid quaking aspens in fall below silhouettes of Front Range peaks.

Although my guidebooks to trails in Rocky Mountain National Park have been widely read, I never have been asked, What is the parks best trail? I have been asked, however, Whats your favorite trail? I suppose this is the same question.

I always answer, My favorite trail is the one I hiked most recently. This answer is not flippant or evasive. The best hike is defined differently not only by the values and goals of each individual who steps on a trail but also by the infinite variety of experiences each hike can provide.

For instance, I once led the late, great authority on bird identification, Roger Tory Peterson, on a short walk from a parking lot on Trail Ridge Road up to the edge of Lava Cliffs and the perpetual snowbank there. He wanted to add the brown-capped rosy finch to the list of birds he had seen.

This may seem a rather odd goal, but to the constantly expanding population of people who watch birds, this is a very big deal. It likely was a bigger deal to the famous RTP than to anyone else. The rosy finches were there in ideal rosy finch habitat of snow and cliffs, unafraid in rosy finch fashion and very easy to see. Doctor Peterson did not need the high-powered binoculars that hung around his neck.

He was more than delighted and praised me to others in the world of natural history publishing, which boosted my career as an outdoor writer. To Roger Tory Peterson this short puff-and-pant above 12,000 feet to a somewhat hazardous cliff edge (other birders below did not focus their binoculars on rosy finchesthey were concerned about their heros safety) was the best hike in Rocky Mountain National Park.

I did not include Lava Cliffs in this collection of the best: too short, less opportunity for less-specific interests than rosy finches, not as varied as other tundra hikes originating from Trail Ridge Road. Yet, for perhaps one of historys most prominent naturalists, Lava Cliffs was the best.

Other factors influencing the best may include convenient access. It seems absurd that the size of a trailhead parking lot can affect the quality of the hike. But when hikers cars on an August weekend line the roadside from the Longs Peak Trailhead parking area halfway down to CO 7, the climb up Longs can begin with a frantic attitude that leads to a fatal fall on the normally safe Homestretch below the summit. The National Park Service would be negligent in its preservation duty if it built parking lots big enough for the largest crowds on the busiest day. So on that particular day, Longs Peak may not occupy its usual place among the best. At such times, hikers can restore Longs firmly to the best list simply by consciously choosing to leave the frustration behind and enjoy the climb that many climbers of all 14,000-foot peaks in Colorado leave until last because they believe Longs to be the best.

Also among the best hikes may be those that advance hikers to other goals. Longs Peak is the goal of some 15,000 mountaineers each year. Many of these hikers are, to be generous, inadequately conditioned to climb a 14,259-foot peak. Lack of adequate conditioning affects the mind first. The body is quite capable of moving on without any dictates from a brain shut down by weariness until some part of the body collides with something overly hard at an overly fast speed. Hopefully, the body part affected is a stubbed toe rather than a cracked skull.