For our last day at Rocky Mountain National Park, we wanted to get all the way over to the west side of the park. But first we stopped
off for a hike along the Old Ute Trail. It was a route used by the Native American Ute tribe to traverse the Continental Divide, so who knows how many
thousands of years of history the trail has seen. In some places the trail is eroded more than a foot below the surrounding landscape, but it was dry and
not filled with mud.
If we had walked the length of this entire trail, it would have taken us down to the Morraine Park on the eastern side of the divide. But
we only hiked about two miles or so, until we reached the Tombstone Ridge area. We had a fine view of all the mountains of the Continental Divide to the south and west.
Then we walked back to the car.
We stopped at a few other pulloffs from Trail Ridge Road as we drove over to the Western Entrance to the park. There is a long set of switchbacks to
take you down the western side of the mountains. There is another ranger station at the Western entrance, so we stopped there for a bit and then made our way to
the trailhead for Cascade Falls.
Here is a video showing the herd of elk as they run across the alpine landscape.
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.
Panning across the mountains across the Forest Canyon.
