Snow in June?

Yep. Real snow. In the Park, the treeline is about 11, 000 feet. Once you get above this altitude, you leave the subalpine forest and enter the tundra region. The snow begins a little below the treeline in the shady areas and gets more prevalent as you go higher. The remaining snow is sometimes 20 feet deep in places, so just think what it must have been at the end of the winter!


I drove up the Trail Ridge Road to its summit, where the ranger station and summer camp store is located. Notice the elevation here.


Below: Notice the reinforcing logs on the roof, to handle the snow. The ranger said the snow in the winter can be 30 feet deep up here.


I hiked up the trail above the ranger station, another 200 feet or so, to the summit where you get a 360-degree view. This is looking back down at the ranger station from about halfway up. Compare this view with the next photo.

A zoom-in shot of the ranger station from the same spot. Notice the snow bank above the ranger station!


And here I am at the top. Notice the elevation: 2.3 miles above sea level.


On the other side of the mountain, I came across this ranger cabin, still buried in the snow! Notice the roof! The chimney sticks out, and has the ash-catcher on top, since the winds up here can catch a glowing ember and carry it for miles, starting a forest fire down in the dry valleys below. The poles are found on lots of things up here, to tell the rangers where to start digging to find their stuff.


Once the snow melts, you get tundra. What looks like bare rock from down in the valley is actually bare tundra, covered in all kinds of mosses, lichens, and short little grasses and wildflowers! It is gorgeous up here. The photos don't do it justice. I expected at any moment to encounter Julie Andrews singing "the hills are alive..."


Back down on the other side, you get back to the treeline again, around 11, 500 feet.