Today we are going over to the "West Side" of the park. That is out on the Trail Ridge Road but past where we stopped yesterday at the Continental Divide. We are thinking we might like to hike a bit around the Continental divide, but we are not committed to it.
Yesterday, when were were viewing the moose-spec off in the distance, the man who pointed it out to us (a fellow tourist) told us that he had seen some moose earlier in the day down an unmarked road a ways down the Colorado River Valley. (Ok, I am cheating a bit here. It is down the valley in which runs the Colorado river. But up here at the headwaters of the Colorado, the valley is called Kawuneeche. Anyway, first on our list of things to do today is Find Moose. So. Off we go.
The drive down the valley is nice. We can see the little baby Colorado river off running through the wide meadow-filled valley. It sure looks like moose country. Lots of wet stuff. They love wet stuff. We had been talking to a young Ranger out at Rainbow Curve (Tour Stop #4) and she had told us more about this mysterious moose road. Actually, she showed us where it is on the map (it is shown on the map, so it isn't secret or anything, just isn't marked as a park location). She also told us that is where she takes out-of-town family when they visit if they want to see moose.
She told us something else. I asked where we could see beaver. She told us that there were no longer any beaver in the park. There was one up Fern Creek earlier in the year, but she died. Seems there is some rodent killing disease going around and the beaver are susceptible to it (being rodents).
Wow. A disease killed all of the beavers. Sounds a little..... odd.
We went out to this road (it was easy to find) and walk along a little road that had a gate to stop cars. There was a strange little marker sign out there that seemed to be marking the trail as CD. I couldn't figure out what kind of Civil Defense installation would be out in the middle of nowhere. Later when looking at my photos, I realized that it was CDT: Continental Divide Trail. This trail doesn't actually go on the divide all of the time. In fact, in this section it is like the next mountain ridge over. I think that the actual divide is too steep going through the park (or perhaps they are just trying to keep that area more pristine).
Anyway. We are moose hunting. We wander off down this one road and we start to see sign of what I can only assume is Moose. We see scat. It is much bigger than Elk Scat but has a similar shape. The stuff we see is a couple of days old. We follow the road more. We see ...... more scat. Then a hoof print that I think is a Moose Print. Then a LOT more scat (fresh!). Now we are basically following a Moose trail through the sometimes boggy ground. We find an area that looks freshly laid in. Yes, could have been Elk. Hell, could have been that guy in the truck from the day before, but I think it was Moose. And recent Moose. But no joy on actual sighting. Sigh.
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| Moose Scat |
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| Moose Print |
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| Even more and Fresher Scat |
We give up and go look in another place. The next place we stop is all paved. Wheel chair access out to a little (1 mile) paved trail and self guided tour. We walk around there some, on the way out we see a couple of people with Big Cameras coming back from the end of the trail. They wouldn't be doing that if there were moose out there. So we stop and go back to the car.
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| Mama |
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| Baby. |
The entire west side of the road is filled with low meadow. Much of it is labeled as "Beaver Ponds" on our map, but those are evidently gone due to the localized extinction of beaver. We decide to go to the Holzwarth Historic Site. This turns out to be a 100 year old trout fishing camp. It has log buildings and such but isn't all that historic. I mean, yeah, some white guy came through here and built a place for other rich white guys to come and fish and hunt and rough it. Mainly they built roads and such. We were talking to a Volunteer out by this one oldest cabin by the parking lot and she told us that she hasn't seen any moose around here today. Then this other lady says she just had a close encounter with a mama moose and her baby not 2 miles from here at Coyote Valley area. Hey, that is where we Just Were. We missed them. Dammit. Well, the sun is out and it is only a half mile walk to the main part of the Historic Site, so we stroll out there.
On the way the Volunteer Lady passes us in a car, changing up volunteer positions. So it is she that is standing on the side of the marshy area pointing at the moose when we get there. Yes, a mama and a baby, not 100 feet away. Chomping away on the plants and generally ignoring the tourists. Moose, it turns out, are big. Like almost Bison big. A bull moose can be 7 foot at the shoulder. Think about that a bit. My partner was delighted and we stood around with people shooting some photos.
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| Moma |
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| Baby. |
During the 1970s the moose was introduced to Colorado because the state wanted another large game animal for hunters to hunt. I am guessing this means that people with money, and or people that could make money off of hunters, and or Politicians that like to hunt wanted Moose to kill. Turns out, the Moose really liked the Never Summer Mountains Mountains area, but they liked the Kawuneeche Valley (where we are now) even more and moved right into the RMNP, where, guess what, no one can hunt them. Not even the Colorado Politicians.
Now Moose are larger than Elk. In fact, Moose are the largest of the deer family. This particular sub species of Moose (which I think was named after a kind of wine) loves to eat vegetation along the Colorado river valley. They also like to eat Willow. They eat a LOT of tender young willow shoots and small trees. They pretty much take out All of the Willow and young Aspen in an area. It turns out that Willow and Aspen are the prime food sources of the beaver. So the beaver population was hit hard by lack of food, and then in their weakened state, hit again by a disease that is going around the rodent populations. So the Beaver is pretty much wiped out in this area (no beaver in RMNP at all at this time). This means that not only are all of the signs that the rangers have put up talking about the helpful little beaver wrong, but the helpfullness is also gone and this is showing in the landscape. To witt: The beaver dams are failing and the beaver ponds are going away and the entire water table in the area is shrinking. This is impacting environmental quality of the entire valley. You know what this sounds like to me? The impact of an exotic invasive. The moose might be cute, but they don't belong here any more than the Tourists. The tourists, at least, are not reproducing and eating all of the beaver food. Hell, we even make the tourist go home in the winter. My volunteer guy said that studies are being done on the moose and proposals will be made, but getting those moose out of the park probably will be difficult, politically. Because they are so cute and kids like to seem them. He also said that the Moose Release program tried to get the National Park service to sign up to support the idea of the re-introduction of Moose to the area. But the NP did some research and could not find any credible evidence that the Moose had ever been endemic to the region. So, re-introduction was not possible since they had not been there (significantly) to begin with.
Here is where I run into some contradictions. Out in front of the historic site is one of those interpretive walk signs about the moose. It pretty explicitly says "re-introduction" on it. This means that my volunteer is disagreeing with the signage. Now, who writes and approves the signage? Perhaps it has outdated data? Certainly the signs that tell us about beaver in the area are old and outdated.
The volunteer was very passionate especially about how the moose was destroying the local willow population. It seems that when elk chomp on willow, they just take little bites. The willow has evolved to put out new shoots over these bites and use the grazing to grow better. The moose, however, just completely strip the willow and kill it. The park service is in the midst of doing some research on vegetation by putting up fences around large areas of meadow to keep the larger mammals out. You can see these things, called "exclosures" all over the park. They are designed to keep the elk (and moose) out but allow other smaller animals in (they have little openings in the bottom and even gates for humans. Visitors can go into the areas, but why would you want to? They are dense packed with 8 foot high willow and aspen. The volunteer told me that they did a test to see what would happen if they took the fence down and the entire multi-area growth was stripped to the ground (like the surrounding meadow) in a couple of weeks.
It is also true that the park does heavy management of the elk. That is, they cull them. They are especially active against diseased individuals (they eliminate elk with a dangerous wasting disease). Note that the study in the link above has lots of details for "Lethal Culling of Elk", but it at no time mentions moose. This is because they haven't had the time to do the legally required study on moose before they started a maintenance plan. So the moose are just going crazy.
From my own personal knowledge I find it interesting that people were surprised at how well the moose is doing in Rocky Mountain NP. I mean, it is well known that moose have a close synergistic relationship with the Rocky Mountain flying squirrel (a subspecies of the Northern Flying Squirrel, often referred to as a "Rocky"). Moose and Squirrel relationships are well documented and the animals have been know to pair up and form what are essentially life time bonds. I remember watching a video documentary as a child that showed one such interaction:
Moose: "Hey Rocky, Watch me pull a rabbit out of my hat"
Squirrel: "That trick never works"
Moose: "Nothin up my sleeve"
Well, look at the time.
Perhaps we need to insert some local Geography.
Looking up from the Historic Site, you can see this brown dirt line running horizontally along the Never Summer Mountains headed generally North. This is the Grand Ditch. Talk about your ugly idea. There is a problem out in the midwest. Not enough water. This problem has pretty much always been there and people have always been doing ill advised things to fix the problem. In this case, back in the 1800s, some beet farmers came up with a way to steal water from the Pacific and move it to the Atlantic, after first cycling it through their beets. They started at right around the continental divide, and began to dig a ditch along the side of the mountain going slowly but steadily up. The ditch would catch any water coming down the mountain, on the Pacific Drainage, and bring it to the end of the ditch on the Atlantic side of the divide. Once the water reached the natural river (which happens to be a branch of the previously mentioned Cache de Poivre) the water would then flow through the valleys of the beets and life would be good. Of course, in doing this they create a few problems. First, they are taking water OUT of the Colorado and the local (soon to be RMNP) valley. Second, they are creating a washout and maintenance nightmare, Third, it is UGLY. A big long ugly ditch going through the beautiful scenic mountains. It is the only man made thing that the Parks Service has sued over and received compensation because of damage done to the park (in this case, a part of the ditch washed out and flooded debris and such down into the park that was expensive to clean up).
I have some pictures of it for you.
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| You can see the ditch there, and where it failed and landslides down in the park. |
What can I say? That is pretty much it. The next day we got in our car and headed out of the park for the Denver Airport.
One think I have come to realize on this trip is that most human's close encounters with wildlife come when we just miss killing them on the road. Oh My God on the 2nd day, those 3 deer came across the road right in front of us. My partner was going a safe speed and came to a quick safe stop and the 3 deer (one with a nice set of velvety antlers) trotted by in front of us. The asshole that was bumper hugging us, on the other hand, had to slam on his breaks pretty hard AND he didn't get a good view of the Deer. And one day leaving the park, we had to slow for a big traffic jam ahead of us, this turned out to be a herd of like 20 Elk in different stages of crossing the road. They were in no danger, all of the tourists were overjoyed to just stop their cars and watch the Elk and we did the same. Then on our way home, about 10 miles past Estes Park, My partner once again at the wheel, we once again stopped quickly as a Cougar dashed across the road in front of us. A Cougar !! That was so cool. I think this must be the case for most of us Humans. "Hey Honey, you should have seen what I almost killed on the road today. Such a cute baby moose."
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