Forest Canyon overlook Rocky Mountain National Park Ceramic Art Tile
— — the wilderness no trail goes into.
Not only on a wall.
“The drop from the parking lot is sudden. A short paved walk, and then the ground falls away two thousand feet into Forest Canyon, where the Big Thompson cuts a line nobody walks. The overlook stands on alpine tundra, above the treeline; the canyon below stays dark with spruce and subalpine fir. Park rangers will tell you the valley is essentially trackless: dense blowdown, no maintained route in. From the rail you can see the Never Summer range across the divide. Most visitors stay five minutes. Some stay longer.
Forest Canyon overlook Rocky Mountain National Park Ceramic Art Tile, on ceramic.
Each tile is finished by hand in our Knoxville studio. Artwork is slowly infused into the ceramic surface under high heat and pressure, and rests beneath a thin glossy finish. The colour lives in the surface, not on top of it.
Pick any four 4-inch tiles — National Parks you've been to, a Smokies set, the four seasons of one place. $ for a set of , cork-backed, ready to live on the table.
Each tile ships in a kraft box, tied with cream ribbon, with a handwritten note from the studio if you'd like to add one.
Three or five different vistas, hung together — a chapter of places you've been, or want to go.
The place, in three passes.
Forest Canyon Overlook sits at 11,716 feet on Trail Ridge Road, the highest continuous paved road in the United States. The pullout is about midway along the road's traverse across Rocky Mountain National Park in north-central Colorado, between Many Parks Curve and the Alpine Visitor Center, on the eastern side of the Continental Divide. The park was established in 1915 and covers roughly 415 square miles, with more than sixty peaks above 12,000 feet. From the railing, the ground drops away into Forest Canyon, a glacial valley carved by the Big Thompson River; across the canyon, the Never Summer Mountains rise on the western side of the divide.
The overlook stands above the treeline. At 11,716 feet, the air carries roughly two-thirds the oxygen available at sea level, and the ground is alpine tundra: a thin mat of cushion plants and sedges that takes a century to recover from a single careless footstep. The Park Service asks visitors to stay on the paved walkway for that reason. From the rail, the forest begins about two thousand feet below, where Engelmann spruce and subalpine fir take over from the tundra; the canyon floor itself, cut by the Big Thompson, is another five hundred feet down. The transition between zones is visible in one sweep of the eye.
Trail Ridge Road typically opens in late May and closes by mid-October, when the first heavy snow makes the upper section impassable. Forest Canyon Overlook is one of about a dozen marked pullouts along the road's 48-mile traverse from Estes Park to Grand Lake. The walk from the parking lot to the railing is short and paved, under a tenth of a mile, and is rated accessible by the National Park Service. The road's high point, at 12,183 feet, lies about two miles further west. Timed-entry permits may apply during peak summer; weather can shift quickly above the treeline, and thunderstorms typically build in mid-afternoon.