Venturing to a sandy beach above 10,000 feet in Colorado’s mountains
Imagine laying out your beach towel, digging your toes in the sand and catching some rays while serenading water laps against the shore above 10,000 feet near treeline in Colorado’s Rockies.
You can imagine this ー or you can hike to Sandbeach Lake.
Yes, high in a secluded pocket of Rocky Mountain National Park is a scene that blends the coast with the subalpine.
A favorite memory of Kaci Yoh over her 17 years living in nearby Estes Park: leading friends to Sandbeach Lake for the first time, swimming and enjoying charcuterie together. Yoh is the communications manager for Rocky Mountain Conservancy, the national park’s nonprofit partner.
“I grew up on the lake shores of the Great Lakes, and you kind of have that same experience where you can be on the beach all day,” Yoh said. “It’s really lovely.”
Lovely and rejuvenating after the hike covering about 4 ½ miles and almost 2,000 feet of elevation from the trailhead beside the Wild Basin entrance station. In “Hiking Rocky Mountain National Park: The Essential Guide,” author Erik Stensland lists Sandbeach Lake as “strenuous” and among 24 recommended lakes in the park.
And along with a beach towel, he recommends bringing sunscreen and a book ー “as this is a great place to enjoy both the mountains and the beach well away from the busy crowds to be found elsewhere.”
Indeed, while cars often line portals closer to Estes Park, the Wild Basin entrance occupies a quieter corner to the south and east, reached along a county road off Colorado 7 near Allenspark.
Reservations required in the summer and other “hassles” have kept Lon Abbott away from Rocky Mountain National Park in recent years. “But there’s less at Wild Basin,” said the longtime University of Colorado geology professor who grew up in Boulder.
And from Wild Basin, he has known a destination like no other ー unlike anything he’s seen in his lifetime exploring Colorado’s high country.
“I can’t tell you it’s absolutely 100% unique,” Abbott said of Sandbeach Lake, “but it’s certainly unusual.”
And it’s thanks to “a combination of factors,” he explained ー thanks to both nature and man.
Away from the higher, steeper peaks, “Wild Basin is one of the wider basins in the park,” Abbott pointed out. It’s shaped like a “U” in the wake of glaciers that carved Colorado’s alpine valleys. It’s different from a narrower “V” shape elsewhere, where water moves faster, more forcefully.
“Those very steep headwalls on the sides of those valleys are going to send boulders and things like that,” Abbott said ー more cobbled, crumbled rock. “So you’re not going to accumulate as much big, expansive sand.”
Sand is the result of weathering and minerals breaking down over millennia from the surrounding Rockies, which are granite in the case of Longs Peak, Mount Meeker and other promontories overlooking Sandbeach Lake. Granite contains quartz, which breaks down into sand, which is transported to form the bottom of alpine lakes all around Colorado.
“A lot of the alpine lakes are going to have the same kind of sand body that you see at Sandbeach Lake, but they’re still submerged,” Abbott said.
Now comes the human element of the story.
In the early 1900s, Sandbeach Lake was dammed for more storage that would provide more water for people in Longmont. In July of 1982, the dam “showed signs of heavy leakage,” according to a Rocky Mountain News article that detailed 32 campers being evacuated and trails being closed.
By the end of that decade the National Park Service acquired the dam, dismantled it and freed the lake ー revealing a shore that had been building.
“What you’re seeing on that beach is the sand that was being delivered into the lake when it was higher,” Abbott said.
Wind, water and time are always delivering sand and other sediment.
“In fact, an alpine lake from a geological perspective is quite an ephemeral feature,” Abbott said. “You’ll go hiking up a lot of these alpine valleys, and instead of a lake you’ll see this sort of lush meadow. An awful lot of those meadows not long ago ー 1,000 years ago, 200 years ago ー would’ve been little alpine lakes or tarns. They just got sedimented in.”
Could sediment build, lakes drop and reveal more beaches? Amid warming, “we may be looking at a future where that happens,” Abbott said.
For now, Sandbeach Lake “is a unique experience,” in the words of Rocky Mountain National Park’s public affairs officer. Kyle Patterson also called it “relatively popular” while reporting about half this summer’s available permits for camping by the shore had been issued.
Other wilderness permits can be had for camping at designated sites along the trail that boasts views of the broader Wild Basin between enchanting, stream-fed forests of ponderosa pine, Douglas fir, aspen and castle-like outcrops. It’s a lengthy, steep push through the trees that suddenly clear for the surprising scene near 10,300 feet.
At the beach, we met a father with his son, a woman taking in the view with her toes in the sand and a seasonal ranger who’d been falling in love with Wild Basin. “It doesn’t seem to get as much attention as other parts of the park,” he said.
Indeed, room was plenty on the beach. We were reminded of a quote from Enos Mills, a champion in the effort to establish Rocky Mountain National Park in 1915: “Within national parks is room ー glorious room ー room in which to find ourselves, in which to think and hope, to dream and plan, to rest and resolve.”
IF YOU GO
The round-trip hike to Sandbeach Lake covers about 9 miles and 2,000 feet of elevation gain and is considered strenuous. The trailhead is beside the Wild Basin entrance station, just past Wild Basin Lodge, which is reached off Colorado 7 near Allenspark, about 14 miles south of Estes Park.
From late May through mid-October, timed-entry reservations are required between 9 a.m.-2 p.m. (not required before 9 a.m.; an early start is advised). Daily entrance fee per vehicle is $30.
Permits required for camping. Find more information at nps.gov/romo/planyourvisit/wild_guide.htm and at nps.gov/romo/planyourvisit/sandbeach-lake