Forest Canyon Overlook is the classic short walk on the high road, 660 feet of rough, uneven asphalt at about 11,700 feet. The park calls it a five-minute walk, and it is not designed for mobility devices. There are no restrooms. The lot is on the left going west and on the right going east. From the end of the path the view drops into Forest Canyon and across to Hayden Gorge and the Gorge Lakes, a glacial staircase. This is a Tundra Closure Area, so walkers stay on the pavement, and the paved path has its own history, tied to a long-running study of trampled tundra. Bighorn sometimes appear on the slopes between here and the Alpine Visitor Center.
On your left in about a fifth of a mile, Forest Canyon Overlook. If you're stopping, signal early and watch for oncoming traffic. When you're done, it's a left turn back onto the road. This is the walk to take if you only take one. It's six hundred and sixty feet of crumbling, uneven asphalt, steep for much of its length, about five minutes on foot, and at eleven thousand seven hundred feet you'll breathe hard, so go slowly. It isn't made for mobility devices, and there's no restroom. At the end of that pavement the ground stops, and Forest Canyon opens under you. Stay on that pavement. The first trail here ran out to the overlook, and visitors made their own short-cut back to their cars, tearing up the tundra so fast that botanist Beatrice Willard fenced a study plot just west of the lot. On her recommendation, the park paved the short-cut. After that, less than one percent of visitors wandered off the trail. So part of that path is a bad habit made official by a scientist. About a third of this park is alpine tundra, and trampled tundra takes decades, even centuries, to come back. This is a Tundra Closure Area, where stepping off the trail can mean a five thousand dollar fine, six months in prison, or both. Forest Canyon started out as a narrow notch cut by a stream. A glacier fifteen hundred feet thick scooped it into a broad trough. At the peak the ice nearly filled these canyons to their rims, while the uplands above were probably blown nearly clear of snow, so the ground at this overlook was bare and windswept, high over a river of ice. From the overlook, look for Hayden Gorge and the Gorge Lakes, a chain of them. Ice poured over giant rock stairs, some more than two hundred feet high, stone-laden ice scoured a basin at the foot of each, and streams linked them later. Try this. Look across the gently sloping uplands and take the deep canyons away. That's the ancient country, rounded hills, with the highest ones just where they are today, along the Divide, Trail Ridge and the Mummy Range, and all of it standing about four thousand feet lower. Keep an eye on the slopes. Bighorn are the park's symbol, and they've been spotted between this overlook and the Alpine Visitor Center. Soil up here still creeps on slopes of just two or three degrees, and between this overlook and Rock Cut you'll cross the wavy slopes it leaves. The ground under this pavement hasn't finished moving.
Photo: Jan Helebrant · CC0 1.0