Grand Lake Colorado - September 15-19 2025

Laura and I love going to Colorado in Spring and Fall, to hike and/or snowshoe and to stay in our favorite Rockmount Cottages in Estes Park. This fall we decided to add a stop at Grand Lake on the way to Estes Park and can highly recommend it.

Instead of finding a cottage or cabin to rent, we booked in at the Gateway Inn, Grand Lake, and were pleasantly surprised with a lovely room, great service and the hotel had a nice pub-restaurant with live music most nights. We ate in every night and enjoyed the food, drink and music.

On Tuesday we hiked the "https://www.alltrails.com/trail/us/colorado/shipler-cabin", a lovely out and back half day hike along the river with some elevation gain. Views were lovely, but then a storm came in as we were still on our way in and we had to turn back before reaching the target cabin. Oh well, we did most of it and did not get too soaked on the way back. That evening there was a great duo in the hotel restaurant playing a mix of blues and soul. Wonderful.

On Wednesday we drove up to Milner Pass on the Continental Divide to hike the Ute Trail. This turned out to be a bit over ambitious. As the sign say, we were starting the hike from of two miles, and it went straight up from there in switchbacks. We made it about a half mile and 300 feet of climbing and we both felt the onset of altitude sickness - headache, light headedness and general fatigue. We backed out and enjoyed the drive back down. Enough adventure for one day!

On Thursday, our last full day in Grand Lake, we opted to hike the Big Meadow Loop, which is an 8 mile loop, with 1200 feet of elevation gain/loss through a lot of burned tree stumps, but then gets into forest that was spared the big fire and then out to a wide open meadow. It was a lovely day of hiking, taking us 5 hours, and we felt somewhat redeemed after our retreat the day before.

On Friday we headed north out of Grand Lake, back to Milner Pass and onwards On Trail Ridge Road across the mountains to Estes Park. That route saves about an hour and a half versus taking the highway south and around the mountains. However the route has many hairpin turns and steep drops with little in the way of safety barriers. It was a hair raising drive. I am glad we did it once. Next time we will take the long way around!