Don't Call Me Ishmael: RMNP 2021: Hormonal elk, melted trees

Bull elk, slightly blurry but mid-bugle

A certain satisfaction comes from driving through Boulder and Estes Park before the towns crack open their usual Saturday bustle.

Living in driving distance of Rocky Mountain National Park makes it the only way for someone wanting to avoid crowds. With Rocky on a reservation system, living close is even more important to beat that system. Anyone hoping to beat the system on the Bear Lake corridor has to arrive before the first reservations at 5 a.m. We decided to stick with the main areas of the park, which don’t go to reservations until 8 a.m. We still had hours to spare before the system clicked on.

Still in the dark, the park was mostly quiet, just an occasional car and a steady increase in light to the east. We roamed around the Alluvial Fan, a giant slide of rock formed during a 1980s flood breached the dam of a small nearby reservoir. A few cars headed up Old Fall River Road, the unpaved original park road.

Sunrise above Horseshoe Park

We wandered the fields of boulders around the river, then decided to explore the Fall River area, as elk frequented the area, especially during the rut. A Horseshoe Park overlook was flush with cameras, scopes and binoculars, all aimed at the edge of a broad meadow. We exited the car to a cascade of bugles from the male elk, competing for the scores of nearby females.

In the faint light, we could discern them along the far end of the park, several hundred yards away. The bugle is one of nature’s greatest sounds. No wonder people believe in ghosts – you hear that bugle in the dark, and it feels otherworldly. It defies belief that one animal can make this echoey noise that feels like it has reverberated through a canyon before it reaches your ears.

When the male elk stopped competing, the coyotes loitering on the herds edge started occasional rounds of yips. It had not heard that from afar, only the sounds of coyotes yipping right beyond the light thrown off by a campfire. As the sun broke above the mountains, the herds stepped into the greenery and disappeared. The bugles continued.

We knew where the herds were, but the excitement came from subsequent encounters, when the elk were not expected. Up closer a lone bull can prove just as noisy. One grazed at the edge of a mountain forest, breaking from mouthfuls of grass for the bugle. After hearing the noise so close, I could have gone home then. In the forested mountain above the bull, patches of aspen near the tree line blazed in fall yellow, as other aspen groves had turned pale green and were only a week from a similar transformation.

Bull elk on tundra

As Trail Ridge Road made its steady climb to the high country, the vistas of Many Parks Curve were too majestic to skip. The big views along the road cannot be passed, not at an hour when so few people congregate at the pull-off’s. The long, wide bend in the road gives views of Moraine Park, Upper Beaver Meadows, and Horseshoe Park, with the park’s largest mountains looming above their meadows.

Longs Peak glowed in the first rays, and my thoughts turned to the climbers working their way up the park’s signature peak. Then I wondered how many were actually qualified to tread there (it’s past my skill level – I don’t do narrow cliffs).

Once the tree line is crossed, the wind stays with you, even when stepping back into a car. Another a bull elk grazed on the reddening tundra grasses past Forest Canyon overlook. He had the treeless expanse to himself. Hard to see from the road, he walked into a dip in tundra. Even on this open hillside, the massive elk vanished from view.

A little headache crept in as we reached the high spot along the road, some 12,000 feet above sea level. Living above 6,000 feet for 2-plus years helped, but I still felt the effects of the thin air.

View from Alpine Visitor Center

Closeup on roaming elk

From the rear deck of the Alpine Visitor Center, one can look deep into the mountains. On this morning, bull elk bugled and hazed each other. We spotted two, then five and in a few minutes more than a dozen popped from the short groves near the tree line. The bugles came in faster succession until I tried to record them, then they fell silent. I finally lucked into a few brief recordings, just for a record of what I heard repeatedly that morning.

Old Fall River Road ends at Alpine, and the unpaved road rises up from the valley across from the hillside the elk pranced. Next time, I told myself. Old Fall River Road comes up 3,000 feet over 12 miles, where it has narrow stretches and steep drop-offs.

A number of ravens ambled through the parking lot and glided in the pushy winds. We walked to the overlook above Alpine, the path fenced off to give the tundra a chance to recover. Pikas chirped from the jumbles of rocks off the trail. The mountains all around still glowed with the morning sun. I felt out of breath after the steps, but felt better for taking the walk.

Ruffled ravens

Rare picture of me above the tree line

We descended from the pass, slowing at the Medicine Bow overlook for a possible glimpse of Wyoming. The Neversummer Range is close, and on clearer days, one can see Wyoming from this spot, the last curve before Trail Ridge Road begins to leave the high ground.

Hungry moose

We didn’t get far when another mountain lake arrived, this one accompanied by a young female moose grazing in the marshy grasses along its shore. Only later when digging through photos did I notice she wore a radio collar. Lake Irene, a lake throwing off a mirror image of the surrounding forest and rocky hills, also deserved a brief spin.

As the morning warmed up, large wildlife encounters plummeted, leaving just chipmunks darting across Trail Ridge Road. The Kawuneeche Valley takes over the landscape after descending from the Continental Divide.

Lake Irene

I noted the robust, braided creek running through the valley floor, not realizing this was the Colorado River near its source. The mighty river of the West was only beginning to take in tributaries and head on its course that made life in the Southwest possible.

The landscape of the park’s west side opens up as Trail Ridge Road leaves the high country. Broad meadows, tributaries running into the Colorado, strengthening the river as it moves south.

Then the forest drastically transforms into a sobering world. The west side of the park was scene of the Troublesome Fire, named for its origin near Troublesome Creek. In fall 2020, the fire ravaged this stretch of the Rockies, threatening to consume the city of Estes Park before a snowstorm stunted its rapid progress. Since the park closed during the fire, I had no idea what awaited where it had burned.

Troublesome wreckage

Along with burning hotter than most wildfires, the Troublesome blaze moved fast . In one 24-hour period, the fire consumed 100,000 acres. Its heat caused water inside boulders to steam, bursting the stone open.

The park buildings at the Grand Lake entrance survived, but the Troublesome Fire’s legacy was inescapable. Park wildlife was not impact as badly as expected, since the animals instinctively fled the fire.

These forests won’t recover anytime soon – full recovery could take 100 years. The trails around the area were sobering. A variety of wildflowers grew around the char, but the dead trees still loomed. Other trees bent limply. According to a ranger, the wood warped when the fire boiled the sap inside, steaming the trees from inside out.

The wildfire forests are not a permanent exhibit any national park might want, but the Troublesome fire remnants will shock visitors into understanding the extreme damage wrought by these increasingly powerful wildfires.