Nine months into the job, Rocky Mountain National Park head Gary Ingram concedes he has much to learn about the best places to visit across the rugged landscape under his command. Not long after he arrived last August, while he was still getting settled in the superintendent’s chair, the park began transitioning from summer to winter operations. Before long, snow blanketed the park and hiking season ended.
He has seen some of the obvious visitor attractions, though, and found them enchanting.
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“I’m looking forward to getting into the interiors of the park,” Ingram said. “I’ve had people tell me these little places are beautiful, but you have to get a mile in, or three, where it will blow your mind.”
Here’s how he describes three of the places that moved him, plus one he has no intention of visiting.
Bear Lake
Ingram’s introduction to popular Bear Lake came when fall colors made the experience even more intense than usual. There are four switchbacks on the final mile of the drive to the trailhead with lots of aspen to see. “Who doesn’t love Bear Lake?” Ingram said. “You’re driving up those switchbacks, I spilled coffee all over the car. The colors were so brilliant, I didn’t care about the coffee. I didn’t want to lose focus on this insane beauty.”
Sprague Lake
One of the first hikes Ingram took with his wife, Athena, was around Sprague Lake, a family-friendly 0.8-mile loop with wonderful views of the Continental Divide. “It was gorgeous,” Ingram said. “There were elk around. And that’s an easy lake to get to. I was blown away, because the trail was in beautiful shape. There was a little trout (swimming) by. Gorgeous, the background, beautiful lake, it was like ideally perfect.”
Lily Lake
This is another beautiful family-friendly attraction on the east side of the park with fantastic views of Longs Peak, which is only five miles away. There is a loop around the lake of less than a mile, more of a casual walk than a hike, but there’s also the 1.3-mile Lily Ridge Loop offshoot with a 180-foot climb. From the ridge, hikers can look down valley and see the YMCA of the Rockies Estes Park Center, three miles to the north. “We went up on that ridge where you look back down on the YMCA, it’s phenomenal,” Ingram said. “That’s an experience.”
Longs Peak, Keyhole Route
A friend of Ingram’s, who was a climbing ranger at Yosemite National Park when Ingram was young, wants to lead him up 14,256-foot Longs Peak, the monarch of Colorado’s Front Range. But that involves a 15-mile roundtrip hike with a 5,000-foot elevation gain, which Ingram is reluctant to take on. “He lives here now and he’s trying to kill me,” Ingram said with his usual self-deprecating humor. “He said, ‘This summer, we’re going to go up there.’ I said, ‘Do I look like a guy who needs to go on Longs Peak?’ Then I’m hearing all these stories: ‘Oh, yeah, you look through the Keyhole (an exposed hole in a rock wall at 13,200 feet), you get blown off the mountain.’ I’m like, this sounds like fun? I’d be up there on oxygen, flying through the air.”
