We pile into the car just as the clouds are gathering over Longs Peak. It’s a weekday during the park’s 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. visitor rush hour. Our timing is perfect.
Bill Knight, director of the National Parks Conservation Program, and National Park Service spokeswoman Kyle Patterson are taking me on a tour to answer the question: Is Rocky Mountain National Park really in trouble?
National Geographic’s Center for Sustainable Destinations surveyed 55 national parks in North America in 2004 and dubbed RMNP a “totally overstressed park” that’s “facing trouble.” Bad as that sounds, it’s way better than Everglades National Park. It was found to be “dying.”
Knight hands the ranger his park pass, and we join a stream of visitors, many using annual passes. “Rocky sells more annual passes than all the other intermountain parks combined,” Patterson says.
We cruise along smooth asphalt on the new section of Bear Lake Road. Completed in 1928, the road had seen no major work in 75 years. RMNP has an $80 million maintenance backlog – half of it in overdue road work – with roads buckling from the rugged weather, erosion and heavy use.
Since 2000, the park has had great success in getting people out of their cars and into more comfortable shuttle buses. It’s easier to watch wildlife when you don’t have to watch the road, and the buses make it easier to enjoy loop hikes and views from scenic overlooks out the extra-large windows.
Patterson says dealing with the traffic/ shuttle/parking formula is part of the delicate dance of managing the park. The first priority is to protect it for future generations; providing for recreational uses ranks a close second.
The priorities must be rigidly enforced, says Knight. “After all, there is no No. 2 without No. 1.”
We stop at an area where staff and volunteers have been “limbing” pine trees. The days of aggressive fire suppression are gone, Patterson says, replaced with the policy of fire management. Removing lower tree limbs reduces the risk of devastating, fast-moving crown fires.
We move on to Hidden Valley, where the park is dismantling an old ski area, building wetlands and letting the forest reclaim the bare ski runs. Then we wind up Trail Ridge Road past Many Parks Curve and Rainbow Curve for some of the most spectacular views in the world.
Except when the haze is bad, that is.
Air pollution from power plants, automobiles and industrial emissions plague RMNP. It’s one of many threats to the sensitive alpine environment over which the Park Service has no control.
“The existing laws and regulations are adequate to protect the environment,” Knight says. “The problem is they’re not properly enforced.”
Still, the wildflowers are brilliant and the creeks roar down the mountainsides as we head to Upper Beaver Meadows for a little botanizing.
Park managers installed a fence “exclosure” around several acres here 25 years ago, and the results are staggering. As the population of ravenous elk has ballooned, the stands of aspen, willow and low-growing shrubs have vanished. Inside the exclosure, you see lush flora that’s severely depleted everywhere else.
As park problems go, elk rank right up there. Sure, they’re majestic and awesome to look at, but without a predator, the big lunks are running roughshod over the ecosystem. A proposal for managing them will be presented to the public in the spring, Patterson says.
We visit historic McGraw Ranch, listen to the birds, greet a family returning from a backpacking trip and inhale one last deep breath of delicious forest air.
So what’s the verdict? Is Rocky Mountain National Park facing trouble?
Absolutely.
There are too many elk, too many cars, too much development along its borders, too much ozone and nitrogen and particulate crud blowing up slope from the cities, and not enough money to address the problems.
It’s Colorado’s stunning, fragile jewel.
I can’t wait to go back.
Diane Carman’s column appears Sunday, Tuesday and Thursday. She can be reached at 303-820-1489 or dcarman@denverpost.com.
