Trail Ridge Road is the highest paved road in North America. At its highest point, the road elevation is an astonishing 12,183'. It crosses the Continental Divide at Milner Pass, at
a lower elevation of 10,120 - this is where the trail head for the Mount Ida hike begins. Trail Ridge Road was constructed in 1931 as a part of a work project during the Great
Depression. Interestingly, we learned that during the Depression there was another project that dug a 13 mile long tunnel underneath the Rocky Mountains - it is called the Alva Adams Tunnel, and it was
designed to carry water from the Grand Lake on the west of the Rockies to the drier Front Range east of the mountains.
After our hike to Mount Ida, our plan was to drive the Trail Ridge Road and stop at every pullout, and perhaps do some short hikes too. But when we got up to the Alpine Visitors Center,
there was lightning and thunder to the east. The clouds were evilly black, just like a Hollywood movie - it looked wonderfully ominous. We stayed at the Visitors Center for a while, looking at souvenirs
and checking out the storm outside.
We tried to get a some video of the lightning strikes, but didn't have any luck with that. We did get some nice panoramic shots from all the pullouts though. The eastern side of the
mountains was cloaked in storm clouds like Mordor, I felt sorry for anyone who had tried climbing Longs Peak that day. (Our plan was to climb Chasm Lake the next day, so we hoped for better weather tomorrow.)
We did a short hike called the Toll Memorial Trail - it is just a 0.5 mile walk across the alpine tundra to some rock formations, but the trailhead begins above the 12,100' level, so even though it is paved
and mostly flat, it still takes a bit of energy to walk up the first little hill.
When we got back to Estes Park, we had a dinner of fish and chips, and then spent the evening walking up and down the souvenir shops. We spent most of our time in the bookstore; Melanie was looking
for geology of Colorado books.
I scanned in the official Rocky Mountain National Park map; here I am displaying the section of the Trail Ridge road so you can identify the pulloffs and mountains.
This is a slow pan from the Gore Range Pulloff. You can see the dark stormy weather to the north, and then the much nicer weather to the south and west.
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This brief video tried to capture how quickly the dense white clouds came spilling out over the roadway.
I was hoping we would capture some of the lightning displays with this video, but no luck. However, it does give a nice view of what it is like to drove along a road up at 11,000 feet of elevation. The big wooden poles beside the road are guides for the snow plows.
   
   
   
 
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Trail Ridge Road Photos
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