Colorado's vast basalt-capped plateau of high lakes, alpine tundra, and big northern wildlife.
Flat Tops Wilderness
Flat Tops Wilderness is one of the largest federally protected wilderness areas in Colorado, sprawling across the rugged northwestern part of the state in the heart of the Rocky Mountains. It spans Garfield, Rio Blanco, and Eagle counties, covering roughly 235,000 acres of national forest land and forming a distinctive high-elevation landscape that feels very different from Colorado's more famously jagged fourteeners.
What sets the area apart is a broad volcanic plateau capped by ancient basalt flows, broken by glaciated valleys, dotted with more than a hundred lakes and ponds, and crowned by a unique mix of treeless tundra, spruce-fir forest, and aspen groves. The wilderness is managed by the United States Forest Service and is well known for its large mammal populations, including moose, elk, mule deer, black bear, and cougar.
Historically, Flat Tops played a foundational role in the American wilderness movement. Trappers Lake, on the north side of the area, is widely credited as the inspiration for early U.S. Forest Service efforts to formally protect wilderness. The wilderness has grown from an early primitive-area designation into a destination that is central to how Colorado's mountain wildlands are experienced today.
