Rocky Mountain National Park: Emerald Lake

ByChristine Updated on

Rocky Mountain National Park is within a couple hours drive of where we are living now in the Denver area. For a trip to Rocky Mountain National Park as a visitor, it would make sense to stay in the park or the town of Estes Park. Alternatively either Boulder or Fort Collins would be a good base camp. We recently went for the day over a weekend, first checking out the visitor center and park video, and getting some tips about good snowshoeing trails.

DISCLAIMER: Never Stop Adventuring contains links to affiliate websites and is a member of the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program. When you click on and/or make a purchase through an affiliate link placed on our website, we may receive a small commission or other form of compensation at no additional cost to you. Please read our disclaimer for more info.

Hiking To The Loch In Winter

We had only ever been snowshoeing once before this hike, but as you can tell from our numerous other posts, we’re definitely not hiking newbies. So we thought we’d try a shorter trail for starters, but one that would still be incredibly interesting and scenic.

For snowshoeing we bought Tubbs Wilderness snowshoes, which came in 25 inch size for both men and women, and to us these felt so much more comfortable to walk in than others we tried on. They have such easy on and off bindings and don’t toss snow up on you as you walk.

So we did the Emerald Lake hike, which is 3.5 miles out and back. The trail passes Nymph Lake, then Dream Lake, and finally Emerald Lake. On the way in, there is about 200 feet of elevation gain between each lake.

That’s not bad, and it gave us a chance to try out the heel lift feature on our snowshoes. After reading some reviews about heel lifts, we were sold, and even after just one use we’d never want snowshoes without it! Basically, it is a bar that you can click up under your heel when you are going uphill so that it becomes more like stair climbing, enabling you to use the larger thigh muscles and glutes, saving your calves.

The day was cloudy and snowy, so some of the scenery was hidden to us, but there were still mountain views, snow covered trees, wide open vistas, and more. One of the coolest things was that the lakes were completely frozen over, so rather than having to walk around, we could walk directly over the lakes!

On the way out of the park, we noticed a car that had somehow slid, hit a stop sign, and buried itself in a snow pile. So we stopped, offered our snow shovel for the cause, and were ready to help push when a guy in a jeep showed up with a winch on the front and easily pulled them out.

We’re looking forward to several more opportunities to do snowshoeing. But we also plan on going back and doing this same hike in the summer, to see how different it looks then.

What To Hike Next

Hiking to The Loch at Rocky Mountain National Park was also a lot of fun if you’re looking for another hike to do next!

Christine is the co-founder of Never Stop Adventuring, and an avid traveler who started traveling the world as a child growing up in a military family. She even lived in Germany for numerous years. Since then she has been to 48 U.S. states, 17 countries, and traveled the U.S. in an RV for over 7 years.

With her 3 kids, the adventures continued family travel style. She has planned and coordinated travel with kids for the last 10 years and shares family travel tips and tricks, destinations, costs and even the mistakes so you can be empowered to take your own family trips with confidence!