Rocky Mountain National Park: Wildlife, Snow, Altitude, and One Very Humbling Slip in Microspikes
My company sent me to Boulder for an on-site work week, and I decided to stay a few extra days because I had never been to Colorado.
I was traveling alone and knew that service in the park could be spotty, and adding snow to that equation felt like a risk I was not willing to take solo. Booking a tour with Colorado Sightseer turned out to be the best decision I made all trip. Will was an incredible guide, knowledgeable and patient with all my questions, and the tour gave me so much context about the park — the wildlife, the landscape, the history — that I would never have gotten driving through on my own. If you are visiting Rocky Mountain National Park, especially solo or in winter conditions, going with someone who knows the area makes a huge difference.
Because the wildlife situation at Rocky Mountain was something else entirely.
Mule deer and elk were grazing like they had nowhere to be. A moose was hiding between the trees, thinking I wouldn’t be able to find it. Prairie dogs are cute on the road to the park. Eagles. I went hoping to see a few animals and came home having photographed more wildlife in one day than I sometimes see in an entire New England season. I was trying very hard to stay calm and professional behind the camera. I was not always succeeding. Some of those elk were enormous and standing very casually very close to us, and my hands were not entirely steady.
The altitude hit me immediately and without mercy. I grew up in Brownsville, Texas, which sits at about thirty feet above sea level. Boston, where I live now, is not much better. Rocky Mountain National Park reaches elevations well above 11,000 feet in places, and my lungs were completely unprepared for the math. I had to stop multiple times just to catch my breath, which would have been embarrassing if the views had not been so extraordinary that stopping felt completely justified. I will always pick struggling to breathe over missing a view like that.
This was the only snow I saw during my whole Colorado trip. Boulder and Denver were clear and dry the entire time, so pulling into the park and seeing everything blanketed in white felt like stepping into a different world. Snow-covered peaks rising against a blue sky, frozen Beaver Lake sitting perfectly still, the whole landscape operating on a completely different scale than anything I had seen before.
I also walked out onto the frozen Beaver Lake, which I am including here as a statement of fact and not necessarily as a recommendation. I stood there for a few minutes in complete silence, looking at the mountains, and felt very small in the best possible way.
And then I slipped going down a snow mound. While wearing microspikes. The microspikes are specifically designed to prevent exactly that from happening. I went down anyway. I got up. Nobody needs to know the details beyond that.
Rocky Mountain National Park is one of those places that earns every word people say about it. Go with a guide if you can, especially if there's snow and you are a confirmed flatlander. Bring layers. Drink water. Accept that your lungs will file a formal complaint. It is worth every breathless moment.
I came home with way too many photos I love and zero regrets except maybe the microspike incident.
