About Lakes of RMNP

An independent project cataloguing every named lake in Rocky Mountain National Park.

The Project

Lakes of RMNP is an independent fan project with a simple goal: put every named lake, pond, and reservoir in Rocky Mountain National Park in one place — with accurate coordinates, difficulty ratings, trailhead information, and community hike reports.

Rocky Mountain National Park contains 138 named water bodies scattered across its 415 square miles, ranging from road-accessible ponds visible from your car to remote alpine tarns requiring an 8+ mile off-trail scramble at 12,000 feet. No single resource catalogs them all. This project aims to fix that.

This started as a personal hiking goal: visit every lake in RMNP. Building a comprehensive database was the natural first step.

Data Sources

  • Lake coordinates and elevations: USGS Geographic Names Information System (GNIS) and cross-referenced with NPS mapping data
  • Trailhead distances: NPS trail guides and AllTrails route data
  • Difficulty ratings: Author's personal assessments and community input, simplified to Easy / Moderate / Strenuous
  • Topographic imagery: USGS National Map (public domain)
  • Lake names: Official NPS/USGS names, with informal community names noted where they exist

Data accuracy is a priority but not guaranteed. If you find an error, please let us know.