Flat Tops Wilderness

The United States Congress designated the Flat Tops Wilderness in 1975 and it now has a total of 235,214 acres. All of this wilderness is located in Colorado and is managed by the Forest Service.  Arthur Carhart's 1919 visit to Trappers Lake in the verdant embrace of the Flat Tops prompted him to be the first U.S. Forest Service official to initiate a plea for Wilderness preservation. No wonder he found the area so entrancing: behind Trappers Lake loom majestic volcanic cliffs, and beyond them a vast subalpine terrain reluctantly yields to alpine tundra (part of the White River Plateau with an average elevation of about 10,000 feet). Approximately 110 lakes and ponds, often unnamed, dot the country above and below numerous flat-topped cliffs. Roughly 100 miles of fishable streams are in the Flat Tops Wilderness.  The valleys and relatively gentle land above the cliffs offers over 160 miles of trails. This is ideal country for horse-packers, and, off the trails, the hiking is inviting and limitless. As many as 20,000 elk also find the area quite pleasant in the summer. A skeletal forest of dead spruce and fir stretches across the higher slopes below the tundra, the eerie legacy of a 1940s bark beetle epidemic. In 2002 more than 17,000 acres burned around Trappers Lake and over 5,500 in the vicinity of Lost Lakes in the East Fork of the Williams Fork drainage amounting to almost 10% of the area of the Flat Tops Wilderness. The Flat Tops is Colorado's second largest Wilderness, a precious expanse of breathtakingly beautiful open land.