With its incredible scenery, Rocky Mountain National Park offers amazing opportunities for beginner and experienced photographers alike to capture stunning mountain photos and great Colorado pictures. While this vast park is full of numerous beautiful landscapes accessible by hiking or backpacking, you don’t always have to travel very far to enjoy magnificent scenery. Many of Rocky Mountain National Park’s more iconic features and vistas are quite easy to reach with minimal travel involved. Here are eight easy to reach photo destinations within Rocky Mountain National Park where anyone can bring home wonderful Colorado landscape photos.
Moraine Park
Beautiful and easy-to-reach Moraine Park lies just over a mile from the Beaver Meadows entrance on the east side of Rocky Mountain National Park. This scenic valley is a photographer’s delight and a perfect location for mountain photography. The Big Thompson River winds it way through a lush meadow that stretches through the valley to the snowy mountain peaks of the Continental Divide. While an amazing location at any time of the day to capture quintessential Colorado pictures, the rising sun lights up the meadow and east-facing mountains in the early morning for stunning sunrise photos. With easy access just off Bear Lake Road, Moraine Park is a great nature photo spot in any season and is one of the best spots in the Park to view the elk rut in the fall.
Sprague Lake
One of the easiest destinations to reach in the park also provides one of the most iconic mountain photography opportunities in Rocky Mountain National Park. Sprague Lake is accessible from Bear Lake Road with a well-groomed, handicapped-accessible trail that loops the lake. The far eastern end offers unobstructed views of the Continental Divide and on a calm day the reflection of the peaks in the water can lead to magical mountain pics. Visit early in the morning for a sunrise photo op and you will be well rewarded with Colorado pictures full of spectacular colors and mountain scenery. Make sure to bring a wide-angle lens to capture the entirety of the scene and a telephoto lens for close-up mountain photos.
Bear Lake
One of the most popular locations in Rocky Mountain National Park, Bear Lake is nestled in the forest at the base of Hallett Peak and Flattop Mountain and offers some of the best views in the park. Bear Lake is easily reached by car by entering the park at Beaver Meadows and traveling to the trail head parking lot at the end of Bear Lake Road. While it is the gateway to a variety of hikes for adventurers of all skill levels, the trail around Bear Lake is fairly gentle and mostly handicapped-accessible. Though Hallett Peak dominates your view as you reach the lake, the best mountain photo opportunity can be found on the north end of the lake. Here you can frame a mountain pic looking south across the lake with a clear view of Longs Peak rising above Bear Lake. Unlike much of the park, Bear Lake is best for late afternoon and sunset photos. A wide-angle lens is perfect for capturing beautiful alpine lake and mountain pics, although having a telephoto lens along too allows you to zoom in on the mountain peaks or snap some wildlife photos.
Dream Lake
Located about a mile hike from the Bear Lake Trailhead, Dream Lake stretches out beneath the towering granite walls of Hallett Peak and Flattop Mountain. It is one of my favorite places for mountain photography within the park and is one of the iconic views of Rocky Mountain National Park. Early morning is the best time to photograph Dream Lake as the light hitting the peaks, and their reflection in the calm water, makes for striking sunrise pictures. Dream Lake is a great, and accessible, year-round photo destination but my favorite time to shoot mountain pics there is late spring or early autumn when there is some ice on the lake and snow on the peaks.
Emerald Lake
If you’re willing to go another ½ mile past Dream Lake, Emerald Lake is another spectacular setting with beautiful green-tinted water and granite walls climbing straight up from the lake. Emerald Lake is best for sunrise pics as the surrounding walls turn deep red in the early morning light. Since the lake is so close to the mountains a wide-angle lens is a must. The full out-and-back trip to Dream Lake and Emerald Lake is 3.3 miles with around 700 feet of elevation gain, making it great for beginner or intermediate level hikers.
Lily Lake
Sitting just below Twin Sisters Peaks, Lily Lake offers beautiful views with opportunities for wonderful mountain photos of Longs Peak to the south and the Mummy Range to the northwest. Lily Lake is a favorite destination for anglers, families, casual walkers, and landscape photographers. It is easily accessible off of Highway 7, about 6 miles south of Estes Park, with a gentle, handicap-accessible trail running around the lake. Because of its ease of access, Lily Lake can see a lot of tourist traffic in the summer months, but if you’re willing to overlook the crowds, it has some fantastic lakeside views. Take a short walk around the perimeter of the lake, or climb a bit higher on the Lily Ridge trail to get some amazing Colorado landscape photos.
Trail Ridge Road
Topping out at almost 12,200 feet in elevation, Trail Ridge Road is the highest paved road in Colorado and traverses Rocky Mountain National Park from Estes Park on the east side to Grand Lake on the west side. Open from late spring to fall each year, the road is accessible to almost any vehicle and offers
phenomenal Colorado landscape photo opportunities ranging from alpine tundra and snowy peaks to beautiful flora and wildlife. A popular spot with landscape photographers, Rock Cut offers sweeping mountain vistas in all directions and is a great location for sunrise photos and sunset pics. While it has numerous mountain photography possibilities, the most popular image shot here is a sunset photo of Longs Peak framed by rock formations in the foreground.
Horseshoe Park / Alluvial Fan
About a ½ mile from the northeast park entrance on Fall River Road is Horseshoe Park. This large meadow, where elk can often be found grazing and enjoying the sunshine, is a great opportunity to take some wildlife photos within the park. At the west end of Horseshoe Park lies the Alluvial Fan, a beautiful cascade of water tumbling over large granite boulders that were deposited here during the Lawn Lake flood in 1982. The wide variety of little cascades offer numerous composition possibilities for waterfall photography. Easily accessible from the parking lot off Fall River Road, the Alluvial Fan can be photographed year-round, but as with most waterfalls is best shot on a cloudy day. Some of my favorite waterfall pictures of this area were taken in early winter when the cascades were icy and partially frozen.
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