Up Above the Clouds

Today:  up to the top of the park and the Alpine Visitor Center, at 11,796 feet.  The highest point on the road is actually a little east of the visitor center and a little higher at about 12,180, but I tihnk that we can all agree that 11,800 is plenty high enough.  We set out under a high overcast, and today, just a few minutes into the park, encountered some Bighorn Sheep.  No rams, alas, but a ewe and two yearlings (according to the ranger--we did not try to calculate age ourselves!)  About 100 pictures later (Note:  we could time the whole day in picture-units; we took 599 pictures altogether, making the haul for the trip so far 1000+), we headed up and up and up.  It started raining partway up, but that turned to snow toute-de-suite, and it was snowing heavily by the time we got to the top.

The drive up was really interesting, nonetheless.  In places, the road is still bounded by tall walls of snow.  The road to the top only opened about 10 days ago (it always opens, we were reliably informed, the Friday before Memorial Day, and this year, that meant it was the earliest it can ever open:  May 22), and it takes six weeks, roughly, for the mega plows to get the road cleared.  Check out the photos for pictures of plows and of snow walls.  Quite amazing.  In lower elevations, the snow is melting rapidly, but from underneath, so there are rapidly running streams of water pouring out from under the snow blanket.

...but I can do that math in my head: he was saying that they got better than 30 FEET of snow at the top this year.

We stopped at the big rest stop just above the "Two Miles Above Sea Level" mark, where, in 2005, Tim and I saw a whole bunch of the Clark's Nutcrackers, and where, amazingly enough, cell phone reception is perfectly clear.  I guess you get close enough to the satellites, and towers aren't necessary!  The scene today was more or less a repeat of the 2005 event:  Nutcrackers, Chipmunks, and Ground Squirrels all OVER the place, begging for handouts, which they get, of course, despite signs.  Chipmunks are little balls of energy, and they don't seem to stop.  I have lots of photos of the tail or the blurry butt of a chipmunk as it runs out of camera range, but eventually one did sit down to eat an illicit peanut, and I got some good ones.

(To see all the photos, btw, click on the "see more photos" link.  Most of the entries have more photos than show in the text, but for this one, I uploaded about 22, so there are LOTS more beyond what you see here.  You can click on any picture for a larger view.)

When we got to the top it was, as I say,snowing heavily.  We both agreed that we have never before been anywhere where it snowed on June 1, requiring hot drink for warming up insides.  The staff up there thought it was all just very blase (though I imagine they appreciated the coffee sales).  The clerk at the coffee counter told us they are expecting 9" of snow tonight, so they "....will have to open late tomorrow."  My information that 9" of snow would close down Richmond for at least a week caused much hilarity.  He said that they will just close the road tonight, plow it in the morning, and re-open late tomorrow morning.  The photos are of the snow clearing equipment being loaded onto trucks--there are machines like this deposited at intervals all down the mountain.  I think they just helicopter the drivers in or something, fire up the tractors, and voila:  road clear.

I asked the ranger how much snow they got this winter, and he said about 370".  I thought that was an interesting way to put it, but I can do that math in my head:  he was saying that they got better than 30 FEET of snow at the top this year.  And that was only about 15% above normal.  The "above normal" actually made them happy.  No running water yet; pipes still frozen.  It should stop snowing by the end of June, though, and then things will warm up!

The other little tidbit we learned at the top was that we haven't been drinking near enough water, though we have been diligently drinking lots of water, which is necessary to offset altitude sickness.  One gets dehydrated very fast at altitude.  Anyway, I heard one tourist ask a clerk how much water she drank in a day, and she told him she had had FIVE 15-ounce bottles of water so far today (noon), and was on her way to get some Gatorade.  So I upped the intake, though I was already stopping at ever pit stop on the mountain.  Let me tell you, the wind chill in a pit toilet at 12,000 feet is something to be experienced!

It was pretty foggy at the visitor's center--actually, I think we were just inside the cloud--and I asked the ranger if there was any way of gauging whether there would be any clearing.  He said that with a storm coming, it could go either way:  it could be socked in straight through, or they could have intermittent snow with clearing in between.  We decided to wait it out a bit, and, lo and behold, it did clear--at least in the sense that the cloud cover rose--soe we headed back down to hit some of the viewpoints we had skipped on the way up.  At the Rock Cut stop, elevation 12,080, Kenny took a hike up the hill, while I hovered by the car, scoping out Yellow-Bellied Marmots and American Pikas.  The latter are little Chinchilla-like animals that live in the rocks below the road, and make their presence known by squeaking loudly.  They are practically the cutest things on the planet.  Our luck held, and I saw both.  Kenny got much better pictures of the Marmots at the top, as he came around a bend to find two posing for him on a rock with a snowy mountain backdrop, but he got back just in time to give me back the camera to get some shots (well, 35) of the Pika.

We took scads more photos on the way down--everywhere we looked there was another great vista with clouds sweeping in, down, around, over and under.  When we got back to the Nutcracker stop, we got the vista of the day, in my opinion.  That stop overlooks the main valley with the Alluvial Fan, and the clouds were moving in and down.  While we watched, the valley filled up with clouds.  Amazing sight!  Look for "Photo of the Day" and "10 Minutes Later" to give you an idea.

When we got back down to the bottom, where it was only raining, we went off to the Moraine Park visitor's center.  The Moraine is a valley that was left behind when a glacier retreated.  The visitor's center there has a pretty interesting exhibit on rock and glacier formation.  The attached photo of the Moraine Valley shows one of the really neat sights of the park at this time of year:  the aspen trees are all just leafing out, and they are BRIGHT green when the leaves are new.  This makes the stand out dramatically against the darker green of the pine trees.  All over the park, you can see these amazing patches of bright green in among the pines.  I definitely do not remember that from last time--I think the leaves darken as they age.

Moraine Park Visitor Center Spooey fact:  above the door is a stuffed Mountain Lion (the only Mountain Lion I've seen in all my visits to the park!!!) that was acquired when it tried, evidently, to take down an Elk all by itself.  The Elk died, but when they (whoever that was) went to clear the carcass out of the road, they uncovered the body of the Mountain Lion.  Speculation is that the Elk, in its dying throes, toppled over and crushed the Mountain Lion.  A case of double homicide.  Moral of the story for Mountain Lions is:  work in pairs.

From Moraine Park, we went to the Beaver Meadow visitor center, where one can watch the movie about the park.  This finished off all the visitor centers on the eastern side of the park.  I discovered that they have put up a memorial outside that visitor center to the park ranger who was missing and for whom a massive search and rescue effort was underway when Tim and I were here in 2005.  (Photo attached).  A kind of eerie symmetry.

On the way out of the park, we saw another herd of Elk, but this one was RIGHT next to the road, so our 50 or so photos netted some quite spectacular close ups of antlers.  Nice!

All in all, this was a very nice day.  It was really neat to see the park in such different circumstances from the last time I was here (Tim and I came in July); I can only imagine what it looks like in the dead of winter!

Tomorrow, we'll toodle up and take one more look at the wildlife meadow near the entrance in the hope of a Bighorn ram sighting, and then we're heading back to Denver.  En route, we plan to stop at the National Atmospheric Research Center in Boulder.  We're meeting John and Daphne for dinner, and then we're on the plane first thing Wednesday morning.  It's been a great trip!