Flat Tops Wilderness

The Flat Tops Wilderness area is located in the White River and Routt National Forests in Colorado. It covers over 235,000 acres of land, and is situated on the White River Plateau.

Flat Tops Wilderness in Colorado is the second largest wilderness area in the state. The landscape is amazing - abrupt breaks in the basalt lava flows of the high White River Plateau mark the edge of the escarpment, while a large area of gorgeous subalpine meadows rise above the cliffs. The open landscape of the wilderness makes hiking quite easy. No other part of Colorado has the same amount of loop routes for hikers and horsemen.

A number of off-trail choices offer challenges not found on the official trail system. Although the Flat Tops are most known for being vast and open, it has another interesting feature you may want to check out. A ghost forest sits below the tundra due to a budworm epidemic that hit the area in the 1940s. It killed the spruce and fir trees; now all that remains is an eerie skeleton forest.

The Flat Tops are made up of flat-topped headlands encompassed by the White River Plateau. The plateau is a flat dome of strata topped with lava.