Rocky Mountain National Park Day 1

Rocky Mountain National Park
Estes Park, Colorado.

My Partner had a business conference at Golden Co. at the famous College of Mines (not to be confused with the College of Mimes, which is in Silence is Golden, Co. ). At first I thought I would join her and be a trophy husband and hang out at the pool, but then it turned out she was staying in the dorm and not at some Golden resort. So I decided to work but then fly into Denver and rent a car and meet her in Golden and drive her to Rocky Mountain National Park (RMNP, from now on).

This area of the country was originally explored by the indigenous Ute and Arapaho peoples. But since they didn't write down the place names, the first Europeans coming through put  their names on everything. The French trappers were amoung the first such Europeans. These trappers called any big meadow area a Parque. So every place that was natural to  build a town was someone or another's parque. This is to explain Estes Park, the name of the  little town at the entrance to Rocky Mountain National Park (dammit, I mean RMNP) where we have a hotel room and are making our home base for our long weeked of adventuring in the high mountains.

This is our first time to RMNP (nailed it) and also our first time trying to do things at this altitude. Our Hotel is sitting "down low" at about 7700ft. That is about the same altitude as the upper ski-lift on Mount Hood. Unlike Mt. Hood at 7700, however, there is no snow here. Everything is green and dry. In fact, it is a little hard to believe that it snows in the place in the winter, though it surely does.
We have arrived here via a tiny little rental car (Nissan Versa). We were pretty beat when we arrived, but we did have enough energy to hoof it across the street to the little restaurant on the other side of the street.

Our hotel is called the Alpine Trail Ridge Inn. It is one of these 60's sort of by the road mom and pop places, but it has been redone recently and the rooms are large and homey. I liked the place a lot. Also, it is just 5 minutes from the gate into RMNP.

We got up in the morning and decided to go into town to look around a bit and find some breakfast. Estes Park is pretty dead in the mornings. It was, for instance, easy to find parking and difficult to find an open store. We did find a wonderful place for breakfast, however, and we got there 30 minutes before the crazy rush, so we didn't have to wait for a table.

Lovely little park downtown at the confluence of the local streams

Trout

Afterward we just went out walking around the town. lots of rock used for constructions. Lots of mixes of new expensive places and older (original?) places. 2 little rivers run through town and join in the middle before flowing into the local lake/reservoir. From our walk to dinner last night, we had spied this cable and tramway that we had in mind would be a good view and perhaps, get some steps for our fitbits.

The tramway is pretty cool. Is is one continuous cable, with no supports other than the top and bottom stations. Two little cars run opposite each other and each holds around 10 adults. The Tram was built by Robert Heron. Heron had first come into contact with Trams when he was assigned to design and deploy them in the Alps to transport troops during WWII. He later made a more careful study of them and went on to not only design the Estes Park Tramway, but many of the early ski lifts across America, including the first double chair lift.  There was a line of passengers waiting when we got there, a longer line when we left, and a comment from the woman working the front desk that both lines were pretty short compared to busy times. I think we waited around 20 minutes for our ride up. The ride is fast (5 minutes including loading an unloading time). It is also a fun and a magnificent view.  At the top, there are some little walking trails, a dirt road to the actual summit, a gift shop (of course) and lots of good views, especially Estes Park. We walked up the road to the summit (where there is a Cell phone tower and not such a good view). It was hot and dry and hard to walk. I think we were feeling the altitude. The dirt road was coated with interesting granite and quartz and Mica. The Mica was particularly neat as it would flake into such very thin slices of clear material.

 

There was also a pretty jay up there flying around. Bright stripes on the outstretched wings. The big thing that most of the tourist were doing, however, was feeding peanuts to the chipmunks. Man, those must be fat chipmunks. In most places (especially RMNP) they extol you to not feed (or approach) the wildlife. But I guess this is private property, so go ahead and do whatever you like that makes the owners the most money (well, where do you think you but the peanuts?).

When we were done with that hiking and had some lunch, we still had a bunch of the day left, so we decided that we would go and find the park visitor center (Beaver Meadow). Turns out that was just 5 minutes up the road, so it wasn't the grand adventure that I was thinking. The park volunteer, however, convinced us that we should go up the Old Fall River road. It is a dirt road that was the original road up to the alpine visitor center area. These days it is  still a dirt road but it is one way only, going up. She told us that it had just recently been resurfaced and people do it in sedans and such, so we should have no problem. Well. That sounds good. Plenty of day light left. So off we went.

First thing we saw was the bottom of the ancient glacier that was Fall River valley. Now it is just a flat swampy meadow with a meandering  creek (called Fall River, but it sure looked like a creek). Off to the side is an old alluvial fan from a flood a couple of decades ago. This thing came screaming down from the mountains and washed out big pieces of the hillside on the way down and then left it in this large fan of debris at the bottom of the canyon. For a couple of years the debris dammed up fall creek and created a new little lake, but that is gone now. Some of the features of the park are changing so quickly that the park is having difficulty keeping their signage up to date.

 

Our little car was front wheel drive, and that was good. It was also very short, that was also good. We were leap frogging other cars going up the road (as people stopped for a view or whatever) and we were behind one guy that was in a sort of long converted camper/van. On some of the switchbacks, he couldn't make it around the turn in one go and had to 3-point turn his way up the hill. That certainly wan't fun. So the trail winds up this little river valley and then takes a bunch of steep switchbacks up to the ridge. All along the way you are getting a good view of the trees on the other side of the valley. Half of them appear to be dead. Turns out the park has been having a particularly bad season of pine bark beetles. These things bore into the tree and can kill it. Usually, the trees secret sap that drives the beetles our and protects the trees, but there has been a bad drought of late and that has weakened the trees (and dried up their sap producing) making them more susceptible to the revenges of the beetles. Seems like if you talk to two rangers (or volunteers) about any particular subject, you will get 2 different opinions. Certainly what the rangers say and what the signage says are often at odds with each other. Is this because the signs have more vigorous scientific research or more overt Political/Public Relations control? In the case of the beetles, for instance, we had one source that told us things were really bad and it was mainly because of global warming and another source that told us that it is a 7 year cycle and we just happen to be be visiting at the worst of a normal cycle. Democrat and Republican fact interpretation? Is Truth Truth?

 

We also got to see some pretty cool rock formations. Everyone seems to agree that they are rocks. Though I guess the agreement on the age of the rocks is varies. Some place between 500 million years and 5,000 years.

At the top of the ridge, you get a good view (your only view in the park from a car) of the ancient Glacial crescent that the Alpine Visitor center sits up on top of. The Glacier is completely gone but you can still see what the size and pressure of the thing did to the land as it scooped out the dirt and rocks to make this basin. Further down the valley, the gravel and such was all pushed to the side make a Moraine, which is a sort of broken waste rock hill or wall. Imagine the dirt pushed aside by a road leveler. That is a mini-moraine. These Moraines are miles long and hundreds of feet high and wide. In the case of the Fall River Valley Moraine, the one on the South side blocked off an existing valley to make a little hidden pocket valley (now called Hidden Valley). It is place where little lakes form naturally up against the Moraine. Beavers used to like to build their dams there. (more on Beavers and the park later).

Glacial Cirque

 

Today we got to the top of the pass and the front door of the Alpine Visitor Center (the highest Visitor center in the USA!!!) just 5 minutes after closing time. Dammit. Too much lolly gagging and having a good time, I say. We did climb the walk up to the summit at 12,000 feet. Everyone on the trail was gasping for air and telling oxygen jokes. Well, except for the dang kids that were bouncing up the steps. Of course, I was at 12,006 feet and they were only at 12,003 feet.

 

We will come back tomorrow !!! Because we bought a 7 day park pass for $35 and we want to get our monies worth.

I got to drive on the way home. We stopped a couple of times to look out over the valley, but it was getting cold and the sun was going down. So the main thing I did was get in the line of traffic going down the hill. It is a long way down the hill once you cross along the Ridge Trail road.

The big excitement was just as we left the park. A herd of Elk had decided to come out in the evening air and eat the grass and block the traffic. I tell you, if you see a bunch of cars doing things of suspicious legality (like parking or sitting in the road) it is probably because they see some critter.