Flat Tops Wilderness

In 1919 the Forest Service sent Arthur Carhart, a landscape architect, to survey Trappers Lake in the Flat Tops and lay out sites for summer homes and a road around the water. Struck by the beauty of the place, Carhart argued instead that it should be preserved in its natural state, free of development. His recommendation was adopted, and Trappers Lake became known as the cradle of the wilderness concept.

Carhart's stand, along with the later work of thinkers like Aldo Leopold, helped launch a movement that grew over decades into the Wilderness Act of 1964, the law that protects wild lands across the nation. The Flat Tops themselves were designated a wilderness in 1975. To stand at Trappers Lake today, undeveloped and quiet, is to see the very landscape that helped change how Americans think about wild country.

The Flat Tops owe their distinctive shape to volcanic activity many millions of years ago, when lava flows spread across the region and hardened into thick, resistant layers of basalt. That hard cap protected the softer rock beneath it, so as erosion wore down the surrounding country, the lava-topped plateau was left standing high, with steep cliffs falling away from its flat rim.

Later, during the ice ages, glaciers ground across the plateau, scooping out the countless basins that now hold the wilderness's hundreds of lakes and ponds. The combination is what gives the Flat Tops their unusual character, a high, open, almost tundra-like tableland studded with water and rimmed by dramatic escarpments, unlike the sharp peaks most people picture when they think of the Rockies.

Water is everywhere in the Flat Tops. The hundreds of lakes and streams left behind by the glaciers make it one of the great fishing destinations in Colorado, with cutthroat, brook, and rainbow trout in cold, clear water, much of it reachable only on foot or horseback. Trappers Lake, the largest, is a legendary trout water and the historic heart of the wilderness.

The high meadows and forests support some of the best wildlife habitat in the state. Large elk herds summer here, along with mule deer, black bear, and mountain lion, and the area is important range for these animals. Birds of the high country, hawks and eagles overhead, songbirds in the willows, fill the summer days, and the sheer emptiness of the plateau makes it a place where wildlife thrives largely undisturbed.

The Flat Tops sit between the small towns of Meeker on the west and Yampa on the east, and the Flat Tops Trail Scenic Byway connects them over the plateau's shoulder, offering a taste of the country from the road. But the wilderness itself is roadless by definition, so seeing its interior means walking or riding in, and its remoteness keeps crowds away.

That remoteness demands respect. The high elevation brings cold nights, thin air, and fast-building storms even in summer, and there is little shelter above the trees. Meeker, the nearest town, was named for a chapter of frontier history involving the Ute people, whose homeland this high country was and to whom it remains meaningful, and it makes a practical base for supplies and information before heading into the wild.

The closest Boutel™ stays, so you can turn this stop into an overnight. Each is an independently owned, editorially selected place to stay.