Mount Ida is one of the fantastic hikes in Rocky Mountain National Park, I am glad that the weather cooperated. It is quite steep at the start, but the initial burst of climbing quickly gets you up above the treeline, and for the rest of the hike you get wide ranging views in all directions. The Never Summer Mountains are directly to the west and were nicely lit by the morning sun for us. The hike walks along the Continental Divide, across a desolate alpine landscape. But we had no wind and fortunately the thunderstorms didn't come up until we were already headed home. It is an exposed area, so getting caught out there in a lightning storm would be a harrowing experience. We only saw two other people on this great hike. It looked like one them was a guide for the other guy. For some reason, they did not hike up to the summit of Mount Ida, but instead stopped just a bit lower at the overlook for the Gorge Lakes. From the top of Mount Ida we enjoyed views in all directions. The weather was clear, and the clouds were high and there was no wind. Check out my photographs from the top of Mount Ida, it is marvelous vista. Because of our early start, we were back at the car in time to have lunch. This left us the rest of the afternoon free to explore along the Trail Ridge Road. We
didn't do any further hiking because of all the thunder and lightning storms that quickly rose up in the afternoon.
Here is a photograph of the trail map as posted on the Mount Ida sign board.  This is a video of the elk that stood on the trail, blocking us from our hike. If your browser pops up a box at the top of your screen asking for permission to run the Quicktime video, or at the bottom of the screen asking permission to run ActiveX content, click the OKAY to permit the Quicktime movie to run. If you see a big blue Q, the video content is still downloading from the website. When an image appears, double click to start playing the short movie. This is the little pica that scurried around at my feet on Mount Ida. I tried to do a full 360 degree view from the Mount Ida summit.    
   
   
 
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Single click on any thumbnail to open photo in new window. (You don't need to close the previous photo to click a new thumbnail.) Place your cursor over any thumbnail to see the picture title. Mount Ida Photos
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