The Silent Screams of Dying Trees

Aug 17, 2007

Last Sunday Tin Tin and I went to Rocky Mountain National Park. It was a beautiful drive from Boulder, through Estes Park (which is a town, not a park) and on up - and up, and up. At its highest point, the Trail Ridge Road is something over 12,000 feet in altitude (and, obviously, closed by snow for much of the year). On this particular day, the last Sunday before school starts in this area, it was also very crowded - we gave up on the Alpine information center because the parking lot was full.

^ This cheeky fellow came very close, hoping for a handout of trail mix - not likely to happen, given all the dire warnings posted about feeding the animals and the presence of a park ranger six feet away!

We continued down the other side of the Continental Divide to Grand Lake, then doubled back into the park to take a walk which, according to the guidebook, was supposed to be "easy." (More on that later.)

I'd just heard about the havoc being wreaked by mountain pine beetles: my friend Sharon, with whom I had dinner in Boulder a few days ago, had seen huge swathes of destruction on her drive up from New Mexico (and had overheard a tourist ask a park ranger: "Where can I get one of those pretty red trees?").

We saw some evidence of damage on the eastern side of the range, but far, far more on the western side: