Time for a change in pace: how about green, jagged, and snowy: how about rushing creeks, lush meadows, lazy elks, 14'ers and glaciers. Time for Rocky Mountain National Park and a trip to the "top of Colorado"!
But the venerable old park faces the challenges of nature. The mature forest is struggling to fight off a major, multi-year attack by the mountain pine beetle. Years of warm winters and drier seasons have given the beetle the edge: everywhere the pine trees are dying. Downed trees pile up along the trails and one wonders about the fire danger.
And fire is a real, every day danger here now. We hike to Cub Lake -- all the guide books describe it as a lovely, mountain lake. Oops. Last October a fire roared through the canyon -- traveling 3 miles in 10 minutes through an area not burned in more than 800 years! So we hiked through blackened logs and across burned out bridges. Eerie. This was the Fern Lake Fire and it still has not been declared "out". They are concerned that embers remain glowing; buried deep under the surface and could re-ignite in strong winds.
We walked into the visitor center under deep blue skies and 30 minutes later re-emerged to find an enormous smoke plume in the west. A lightening fire had started the previous day and the afternoon winds, well, the blaze went from 2 acres to 75 acres to 330 acres in an afternoon. And how long will it burn? Anybody can guess.
It was sobering to be in the Park -- rather like a "see it now" trip -- because it is definitely changing fast.
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| Cub Lake -- still lovely, especially if you see past fire and beetle damage |
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| Western Terrestrial Garter Snake |
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| Lovely Alpine Meadow |
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| One of the Big Boys |
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| Ooops -- Smoke from the Big Meadow Fire |
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| Chasm Falls -- imagine the heavy sound of rushing water in the background! |
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| The Loch. |
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| Rock, Snow, Sky, and Trees. A superb example of the Sub-alpine Forest |
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| Dream Lake....we hiked down snow covered switchbacks for this view! |
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| Richly colored wood grain |
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| Spring scene |
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| Just a few wildflowers -- we were about a month too early it seems |
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| Hiking along a creek listening to bird calls. |
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| Wildflower |
