Hiking the Rocky Mountain National Park - Part I

Photos of things to do at Rocky Mountain National Park. Hike Upper Beaver Meadows Loop and drive to Alpine Visitor Center. The drive will gain roughly 4300 feet putting you near 11,800 feet elevation.

For our first day of hiking at Rocky Mountain National Park, we made the 22 mile drive up through Estes Park (famous for The Stanley Hotel which inspired Steven King for The Shining) and on a few more miles to the Beaver Meadows Visitor Center to get some hiking tips. We arrived between 9-10am which was too late to get into the more popular hiking spots so we took the recommendation to drive a short distance up to the Upper Beaver Meadows trails to do those and try for the more popular spots like Bear Lake later in the week when we would try and arrive earlier.

Upper Beaver Meadows Loop

Upper Beaver Meadows Loop had very few people on the trail which was nice. Altogether it’s about a 5 mile hike that goes up about 800 feet elevation, so easy to moderate difficulty. We could not believe the amount of downed trees we saw, mostly the result of flooding that happened in years past. At one point, a hiker came jogging towards us on the trail claiming lightning/thunder in the distance so we started to wonder if we should turn back too, but a quick check of our weather app (once we found a signal) revealed we’d only be getting a drizzle. That drizzle happened just towards the end of our return to the car so we timed it perfectly.

Estes Park Visitor Center

Next, we took the car back to the Estes Park Visitor Center where they had free electric car charging so we left the car there to fill up while we had lunch and killed some time by walking along Lake Estes to the marina and back.

Alpine Visitor Center

After a couple hours, our car was fully charged and we went back into the park to attempt the drive to the Alpine Visitor Center which was 26 miles further into the national park and also gains about 4300 feet to put us at 11,800 feet elevation where it’s nearly 40 degrees outside! Our Fiat can go about 90 miles on a full charge and come back on the electric equivalent of fumes. However, when it’s cold and uphill like this, we can expect to go maybe half that before running out of juice. We made it to the top with about 45% charge left, but due to regenerative braking and that it’s nearly all downhill the entire 50 mile return trip to camp (which actually charges the battery more than it is using) we actually made it back with 55% charge left! The drive was well worth it as the views at the peak were spectacular! We even saw some elk and rams in the distance up there.

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