Paradise Park, Rocky Mountain National Park, Colorado ~ July 18-21, 2009

Location... Paradise Park lies in the remote Southwest corner of Rocky Mountain National Park in central Colorado. It is a designated Special Research Area, so there are no established trails and overnight camping is prohibited. Erik Stensland (website), a good friend and fellow photographer, worked diligently with the National Park Service to obtain special permits for an extended trip to photograph and document this pristine wilderness. And he graciously invited me to join him! We explored and photographed for 4 days with the agreement to share our experiences and images with the park service to better their understanding of the area's current conditions.

Route... We began our trip with a quick 7 mile evening hike from the East Inlet trailhead to an established backcountry campsite near Lake Verna on the West side of Rocky Mountain National Park. The next morning we crossed the East Inlet stream to bushwack and climb our way to Paradise Park. Once in the area, we visited Ten Lake Park, the high tundra bench on the East side of Paradise Park, the unnamed lake and waterfalls in the Southeast corner and the large marshy lake near the head of the Paradise Creek drainage.

Off-trail travel with large packs was even slower than anticipated, so we were not able to visit all the areas we'd planned. But what we did see was incredibly beautiful and pristine. We hope to return in the future to push deeper into Paradise Park to continue documenting this remote Rockies gem.

Slideshow >  View large sized images from this trip report in a slideshow format with captions.

View in Google Earth... View a pre-recorded tour with pop-up images using the Google Earth browser plug-in. You can also manully browse the 3D map interactively. Click the play button (in the lower left corner below) to start the tour.

Notes on the Google Earth browser plugin: If you have the plug-in installed, you will see Google Earth below. If you don't have it installed, you can click below to automatically install it, or you may manually install it from the Google Earth Plug-in website.