The First Week in Rocky Mountain N.P.

Rocky Mountain National Park – we made it! Coming down from the ‘back side, from the west, we saw the magnificent snow-covered Rockies plus some other mountain ranges to the west and the south, I guess they must all be the Rockies. After getting supplies in Granby, we contacted our volunteer coordinator Liz, who met us at the Kawuneeche Visitor Center and gave us a warm welcome and then took us up to the Holzwarth historic site where we settled in to our new home, the Tivoli cabin, a 4 room cabin with full bath, partial kitchen, and heated by either space heaters or wood stove. There is plenty of wood left for us, but so far we have been getting by with the space heaters. We learned that last year was much colder at this time, and we were rather glad that although our cabin is at almost 9000 feet of elevation, it has been free of snow and warm enough. The temperatures can dip down into the thirties at night in the summer.

Our first full day here was spent exploring our immediate surroundings. A service road goes through the historic site, hereby referred to as the ranch, so we took it up to where it met the Grand Ditch, which is a water supply for the Ft. Collins area. We were at over 10,000 feet when we met the ditch, and had stunning views of the Neversummer Mountains. Many of them reach heights greater than 12,000 feet. We were following ‘cat tracks’ up the road, and after following the ditch for a while we came upon the ‘cat’ itself, a front loader Deere so not a cat at all. It was used in clearing the ditch from snow. Apparently back in 2003, the Grand Ditch Co. failed to clear the snow properly and it caused major breach that almost wiped out the historic Holzwarth site. Yikes! They were able to save it with some quick diversion work. I also had 3 bars on my cell phone up there, but get only 2 around the ‘ranch’, and reception here is spotty. But you can’t expect all the luxuries you want in paradise.

We are taking training with about 25 other new volunteers and interns. There are a little over one hundred volunteers who will work in the west side of RMNP, also known as the Colorado River District of the park. Over the next two weeks we will be joined by many other returning volunteers who will participate in more training with us, including First Aid and CPR/AED, which we had taken before but need to get refreshed on. Our first day was a general tour of the west side and Grand Lake, the community that serves as the gateway to this side of the park. Estes Park serves as the gateway to the east side of the park, or referred to as the ‘other side’ by the west siders.

We didn’t complete the tour however, as before we could get up to the ‘real high country’ and the Alpine Visitor Center, we learned that our access to the ranch (and our home) was being threatened by the surging Colorado River. So we were ushered down to the Resource Protection unit (also Law Enforcement), and had a discussion with Head Ranger Mark, who informed us that the bridge leading into the ranch could be wiped out if debris got caught at the bridge, and he thought it was safest if we evacuated and stayed somewhere else until it was clear whether the bridge had survived or not! This was happening on our second day in the park! We were told that this is very unusual, the Colorado had never threatened this newer bridge, although previous bridges had been lost, including a few of the Holzwarth’s bridges. But there was another way out in case the bridge got wiped out, a couple miles to the south another bridge crosses the river which was built higher and would not likely be wiped out by the raging waters of the river, and if we could access that, we had an escape route. Kathy and I told Mark that we could hike out at through this bridge if need be, and I suggested that by leaving our car on the other side of the river, we could at least have use of the car in case the bridge went. So instead of evacuating, we have stayed the last week in our cabin, leaving our car on the other side of the river.

The bridge has held, thankfully. We have now spent the last week keeping our car on the other side of the river and walking in to our cabin.

Friday June 11 had been a long day, we had gotten up especially early (for us) and went on a tour of the east side under cloudy skies, taking Trail Ridge Road. Normally there would be fantastic views, the road goes up to over 12,000 feet in elevation. But the only good view we got was on the way back at the Many Parks Overlook, which was down further on the east side. We did enjoy our time at the backcountry office there, hearing Ranger Barry give us a motivational speech about the renewing qualities of our national parks. He reminded us of the dual mission on the parks, how we have to protect our parks and provide for the interests of the visitors, which can be a fine balance sometime. Thankfully Trail Ridge Road was still open for our trip back to the west side, but it closed the next day due to snow.

Considering how worse it could be if the bridge went out, it hasn’t been too bad except for Friday night when we got back from doing our laundry and shopping at 9:00 PM, expecting to walk the half mile into our cabin under the fading twilight. As we were preparing to head in, flash! Boom! Lightning struck, and nearby, this is not good. So we waited the better part of an hour for the storm to abate. It seems that whenever we thought it was clearing up, lightning struck again. We finally walked in under pitch black skies and no light, until after crossing the bridge when I remembered I had a small light on my keychain which helped for the rest of the way in. Lessons learned: the weather is unpredictable in the mountains so be ready for anything and always make sure you have a good light. As of Monday, June 14 the access to the ranch is open again, yippee! No more waiting for storms to abate just to get to our car!

I had to take a trip in to the Denver airport on Saturday to pick up my daughter Katherine and son Ben. It takes about two and a half hours from the west side to get there, and requires going through Berthoud Pass on US 40, which can be dicey in bad weather. There was mixed precipitation on my trip into Denver, and the many twists and curves made it slow going. But I got to the airport in plenty of time, we delivered Ben to Boulder where he met up with some of his buddies and stayed with some of them for dinner. Then I had another disagreement with my gps as it told me it would only takes two hours to get back to Grand Lake, and not until we were heading out of Boulder did I realize that she expected us to go up to Estes Park and through the park on Trail Ridge Road, which was closed. So it ended taking more like three hours to get back, again going through Berthoud Pass. This time it wasn’t precipitating, but it was foggy, and only because I could follow the lights of a vehicle ahead of me did I feel safe enough driving it. So traveling to the Denver area is always going to involve potentially treacherous driving, any time of year and I’m trying to get my head around the fact that road closings will be a way of life out here.

We have just scratched the surface on the hiking available here. We have also gone up the Colorado River Trail a few times, once with one of our rangers who showed us some historic sites of old miner cabins and an old mine. We also went to the lookout on Shadow Mountain with a group of fellow volunteers and had great views of the surrounding scenery with the lakes, the town of Grand Lake and surrounding mountains. We have talked with a few of the backcountry rangers and are planning on doing some backpacking soon, stay tuned!