Rocky Mountain National Park - Part 2

Thursday, June 29 was our second day in Rocky Mountain National Park. We decided to go back to try finishing our original plans from the previous day, so we headed back to the Bear Lake area and hiked to Emerald Lake. Before reaching the pristine Emerald Lake, this trail passes by two other lakes: Nymph Lake and Dream Lake.

Nymph Lake

Nymph Lake from northwest side

View of Nymph Lake from an overlook above

Dream Lake appears as an elongated waterway stretching toward the nearby peaks. There are a number of wet marshy areas around it, fed by the mounds of melting snow. Not all the snow along the trail had melted while we were there, so there were some places we had to walk over the packed slick snow banks. I had to laugh when I overheard another young child asking his parents if he could sled down one of these snow banks along the side of the trail that ended in an extremely muddy and wet bog.

Dream Lake

Nymph Lake was nice, Dream Lake was beautiful, and Emerald Lake was stunning. It was also fairly crowded though; this is probably among one of the more popular hikes in the park.

Emerald Lake with Flattop Mountain behind it

It was fun to see a number of Clark's Nutcrackers flying around Emerald Lake too. There was also a marmot there looking for handouts, as well as numerous cheeky chipmunks with no fear of humans. The chipmunks around the park that we saw were crazy. They would run right up to people, under their legs as they sat on the rocks, and even eat from people's hands. We frequently had to shoo them away or chase them off our camelpaks. Obviously way too many people ignore the signs warning visitors to not feed the wildlife, which is sad since it ultimately is quite bad for the animals.

Clark's Nutcracker

Yellow-Bellied Marmot

Emerald Lake with Hallett Peak

 

After returning from our Emerald Lake hike, we decided to go see Alberta Falls since there was an adjacent trail heading that way. Austin enjoyed studying some of the flowers along the way.

Golden Banner

We soon reached an overlook of Glacier Creek. After that, the trail continued to follow the creek up to the falls.

Alberta Falls

We found Glacier Creek roaring through a granite chute before plunging over Alberta Falls and continuing its cascade down the mountain slope.

Austin & Nate at the top of the falls by the granite chute the creek runs through

We hiked back down from the falls to the Glacier Gorge parking area, where we got on the shuttle and headed back to our car. From there we headed over the Sprague Lake to eat a picnic lunch and hike around the lake.

During our hike, we spotted a female Red-Naped Sapsucker pecking at some dead trees.

I found the wild blanket flower growing along this trail and in other places in the park interesting. We have some blanket flower growing in our yard, but I hadn't seen it growing wild before.

Blanket Flower

After hiking around the lake, we headed back to our cabin for dinner, but not before stopping at a nice viewing area not far from the park entrance.

In total, we hiked about 6.9 miles for the day.