Rocky Mountain National Park Day 1- Bear Lake Corridor

Can you see Rocky Mountain National Park in one day? Yes but we don’t recommend it. You could easily spend a week or more hiking all of the trails. Some of our national parks are limited in the areas you can visit. Rocky Mountain National Park gives a lot of access to its visitors but several of the roads are seasonally closed so be sure to check ahead of time. We visited the park in mid June and still needed our sweatshirts, hats, and we always carry our lip balm when hiking.

On our first day we had our Bear Lake Corridor timed entry ticket and passed through the two checkpoints and started our way up the road. Almost immediately we saw three large elk with impressive racks still covered in felt. Throughout the day we saw many elk in this section of the park.

Near the beginning of Bear Lake Road is a shuttle system and it is highly encouraged that you take advantage of this due to limited parking at trail heads. We decided to chance it and went ahead and drove our truck up to the Bear Lake parking lot and we were lucky enough find a spot. From the Bear Lake trailhead we walked the half mile easy stroll around the lake. After completing the Bear Lake Loop we decided to hike the half mile up to Nymph Lake. This is a moderately challenging hike as you gain 250 feet in elevation over the half mile. The good news is that the scenery is beautiful and the half mile hike back is all downhill.

Our next hike started at the Glacier Trail head parking lot. From there we hiked the .8 mile up to Alberta Falls. This is a moderate trail that begins with a walk along Tyndall Creek and then turns and continues uphill and then along Glacier Creek until you reach Alberta Falls. Y'all, these falls area amazing! At the falls there are plenty of opportunities to scramble along the rocks carefully to get different vantage points of the rushing water.

For those three hikes, another option that we highly recommend would be to take the shuttle to the Bear Lake stop, hike Bear Lake and Nymph Lake and then hike down to Alberta Falls and then back out to the shuttle stop at Glacier or continue to hike a 1.9 more miles down to Sprague Lake.

Our next hike was the Sprague Lake nature Trail. This half mile loop around the lake is an easy walk along an accessible path. If you’re lucky you might even see some of the moose that hang out around this lake. And if you bring your fishing pole you can try your hand at catching some trout.

From there we drove down to the Cub Lake and Fern Lake Trailhead areas. This area, also known as Morraine Park, gave us epic views of the snow capped mountains, a river running through a field of wildflowers and a huge heard of Mule Deer.

Accross from Moraine Park is the Discovery Center which has some very interesting displays and a store. When we left the Bear Lake Corridor, we decided to squeeze in a drive down Endo Valley Road. This was an amazing drive, but we'll add that to day 2's review of the park since it's not in the Bear Lake Corridor. There was a lot more that we could have hiked in the Bear Lake Corridor and so we would highly suggest at least one full day at this section of Rocky Mountain National Park.