The highest continuous paved road in the United States there is a reason the song says Rocky Mountai High
A person can get high on natures beauty, no drugs or alcohol needed.
Early Opening of the road starts this way.
Taking a snow measurement.
Digging out the Alpine Visitors Center at the top of Trail Ridge Road for the season
Driving onto a new storm
I call these last two Belly Flowers, can you guess why? These flowers are found in the alpine tundra above tree line.
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Hope you enjoy these as much as I do.
Good photo essay/documentary.
Is this Mount Evans by any chance?
No AMac Trail Ridge Road is the highest continuous paved road (it goes up and over the other side).
The Mount Evans Scenic Byway (the highest paved road) begins at the junction of Interstate 70 and State Highway 103 near Idaho Springs , Colorado and continues on State Highway 5 through a corridor between the Mount Evans Wilderness where it ends near the summit of Mount Evans . The byway is 28 miles (45km) in length and gains over 7,000 feet (2,100m) of elevation. Achieving a final elevation of 14,130 feet (4,310m), this is the highest paved road in North America .
The road was originally planned by the Denver Mountain Parks system to link Summit Lake Park and Echo Lake Park to their lower altitude parks in the foothills. As originally planned, the road ran from Bergen Park near Evergreen to Echo Lake, and then to the summit, while the road from Echo Lake down into Chicago Creek Canyon was a secondary branch. From the start, the road was planned in terms of the scenic vistas along the way. [ 1 ] The route was set by Frederick Law Olmsted, Jr. , and for a while, between 1915 and 1920, it was to be the primary access road for a proposed National Park comprising much of what is now the Mount Evans Wilderness Area . [ 2 ]
There is a park fee charged if using parking lots and facilities along the upper portion of the byway. Prior to 2012, the Forest Service was charging anyone entering the highway at the entrance to Highway 5. [ 3 ] This portion of the byway is often narrow, with sudden dropoffs that have no guardrails. It is typically only accessible from Memorial Day weekend through Labor Day , although the amount of access and specific dates vary depending on the weather and road conditions.
This route was designated a National Forest Scenic Byway on July 1, 1993 by the US Forest Service and has also been designated a Colorado Scenic Byway by the Colorado Department of Transportation .
This road must be loads of fun during the spring thaw ... if there is one at that altitude .
There is in fact a spring thaw there and it makes for a really greasy road sometimes in the early days.
I guess I can assume that the above pictures were pre-spring ...
The photos are taken the beginning of spring, the snow will never completely melt off at those elevations.
I think I've been on this road. Daddy was driving our Winnebago, and the septic tank froze, and exploded all over the trucker behind us. He passed us, streaked with blue, windshield washer going for all it was worth, shaking his fist. It was around the 4th of July...
Daddy said it was the highest road in the Rockies. I'm wondering if this is the road that was featured in The Long Long Trailer, with Luci and Dezi Arnez?
I knew of another person who called them belly flowers, cause you had to get on your belly to take a picture of them..
That is absolutely correct and some are even smaller than those.
Thank you for adding this Kavika, so very true.
I thought that it was very fitting Larry. I used to fish the creeks and rivers around Evergreen Colorado. Lot's of nice brookies there.
I know those streams well Kavika and they are still handing out Brookies to all comers.
Really nice photo essay, Larry. I can't get over the depth of the snow. Amazing! So nice to see the contrast between winter and spring!
Thank you Perrie, they start trying to open the road in late April with the target being to have it open by Memorial Day. Sometimes they have to go back in and re-open it if mother natures decides it's to early. (snow storms)
Hmmmm, I may have to take another trip to Colorado Larry.
About another week and the turbidity should clear up and you'll be pulling them out of ever eddy you find.