I had finished my business duties on my trip to Denver and had hotel reservations in Estes Park just outside Rocky Mountain National Park.  That gave me two full November days to enjoy and photograph the scenery, wildlife, and whatever I would find.  The plan was to get up early enough to photograph the sunrise hitting the snow covered peaks to the West.  But when I woke up the first morning, there was two inches of fresh snow covering everything and a lot more coming down.  No sunrise that morning.

 

Equipped with minimal winter gear, I set out.  I had enough for car touring and short day hikes.  Under my hooded Gortex jacket I had a wool knit cap, wool sweater, and a T-shirt.  I only had cotton field pants with cotton long underwear, which I knew might not be adequate.  But my feet were well protected with polypro liners under good wool socks and heavy duty Gortex lined hiking boots.  I had a fanny pack with my camera  gear, mylar survival blanket, no-cook trail mix, matches, candles, ... well, you know the basic day hike survival items..  In my pocket, I had a compass and a couple of Trails Illustrated maps of the areas I would be traveling.

 

I started with a stop at the Visitor Center to get advice on road conditions, wildlife opportunities, and recommended activities.  The ranger was quite helpful with more ideas than I had time to enjoy.  She marked my map where the roads stay gated closed in winter and told me where I would likely see beaver, elk, bighorn sheep, etc.

 

I was a little nervous about hiking any great distance from the car because of the weather, (fear of getting trapped in the snow),  and the altitude  (I am an Easterner who huffs and puffs at 4000 foot elevations in the Appalachians).   I decided to begin at Horseshoe Park where there should be a chance to see elk and bighorn sheep from the car and take the short hike up the Alluvial Fan Trail, where a flash flood in 1982 had caused a significant change to the terrain.

 

When I got to Horseshoe Park, it was still snowing, but visibility was not too bad, I could see about a mile or so, but no elk or big horn sheep anywhere to be seen.  The road travels along the north side of the valley part way up the slope providing views from a slight rise.  I pulled off the road into a parking area.  The snow was continuing to accumulate on the roads, but the little compact rental car had no trouble plowing through the four inches of fluffy white stuff.  I waited about half an hour before I gave up on wildlife and decided to head for the Alluvial Fan Trail at the head of the valley.

 

As I pulled into one of the two parking lots built to handle the summer crowds, I felt truly lucky to see no other cars in the lot.  In fact, I had seen only a few other visitors since I entered the park.  This is Rocky Mountain National Park, less than a hundred miles from Denver, a very popular park with 2.6 million visitors a year, and I had it practically to my self.  I took my camera gear and tripod out and carried them with me.

 

The flash flood that created this intriguing spot began when a man made dam at Lawn Lake, way up the mountain, collapsed.  The rushing water ripped trees, rocks, dirt, -- everything --, away and used the debris to scrub out a wide channel of devastation right through the rock and earth, then dumped the debris on top of the road at the point where the creek meets the valley.

 

I followed the trail up through the pile of huge boulders and rubble where the road used to be.  A beautiful falls now occupies the new channel down the mountainside.   I set up my tripod where the view of the falls was good, as I mounted my Minolta 400si 35mm camera on the tripod, I made certain to tape a small square of polypropylene over the flash contacts. I have had trouble with the camera electronics going bonkers when those contacts have gotten wet from rain.  I assumed that snow could cause the same problems.  I began taking pictures of different views, eventually changing lenses from wide angle zoom to telephoto zoom to capture the intricate rock features.  As I was snapping away at the lovely snow framed falls, a magpie suddenly swooped down and landed on a rock just three feet away from me. 

 

At last!  Wildlife!   But to take a photograph of this rather interesting bird with an extra long tail I needed to get the camera turned around the other way on the tripod and aimed down and focused in close.  Of course by the time I got all that done, the silly bird flew away to a tree branch just out of useful range of my equipment.   I put the telephoto back on and took a shot or two anyway.  I tried to get closer, but the bird had other ideas now.  So I have a few pictures of some dark silhouetted bird in a dead tree against a gray sky.  So far I was not impressed with my wildlife photography skills.

 

With a little care, I scrambled up the side of the channel between and over boulders as large as a car to get close to the falls.  I took some more shots and eventually decided to head back to the car.  Three people passed me on the trail on the way back.  They had parked in the other parking lot. 

 

When I got back to my car, still the only one in that lot, I discovered that three magpies had claimed the space under my car as their shelter from the falling snow.  And for reasons they did not explain to me, they were pecking at the built up blocks of snow and ice that had formed on the undercarriage behind each wheel.  This time I had the opportunity to get the camera prepared with the telephoto zoom.  They occasionally came out from under the car and as they strutted about showing very little fear of me, I managed to get some rather nice close-ups.

 

I headed back into the Horseshoe Park valley area, still seeking larger wildlife to photograph.  Again, no sign of any critters large or small.  The snow was now about six inches deep.  Next I continued along the road up the side of the mountain to where it joins Trail Ridge Road.  The ranger had told me Trail Ridge Road was kept open as far up the mountain as Many Parks Curve, a location with sweeping panoramic views of several parks, the local name for valleys.  When I got there, the falling snow was so thick that I could not see any of the views, just white air filling the void that should have been a view. 

 

Oh, well!  I decided it was lunch time.  My choices were trail mix from my pack, or drive back into the town of Estes Park for a real lunch.  Reality won out.  So I drove back out of the park.

 

Just as I was passing the first private property outside the park, I spotted a lone adult female elk bedded down halfway up the hill to my right. With the 200mm zoom at maximum, I was able to get a decent framing of the first non-human mammal I had seen in four hours in the park.  I then continued down the road toward civilization and spotted two mule deer bucks browsing just off the left side of the road.  I got their pictures also, but the barbed wire fence immediately behind them detracted from the natural feel.

 

When I got into town, I took a tourist walk through the shops and got some lunch.  Then I walked through some more shops.  The proprietors were friendly and did not seem to mind the obvious fact that I was not buying much.  I worked my way down the block and through an alley to the backside of the row of buildings, where there were a few more shops that did not face the street.  Instead there was a small park on both sides of the Fall River that cascaded through town.  The same river that had been fed by that flood back in 1982.   The same river that had wiped out some of the town and took three lives.

 

One little gift store on the park side of the block had a nice tiny gilded pine cone on a necklace that I got for a gift.  While conversing with the owner, I mentioned my lack of success finding elk.  He said, I should just stick around there, because the elk wondered into town regularly, as evidenced by the piles outside his shop on the sidewalks in the small park. The townsfolk accept the meanderings of the elk through their town as a blessing.  Instead of doing something to keep the elk out, they make it a crime to chase them away.   I think I could live in a town like that.  However, there were no elk in town today.  My wildlife photography would have to continue back in the park.

 

I headed for Moraine Park, a beautiful valley south of where I had spent the morning.  Like Horseshoe Park, the road runs along the north edge of the valley.  Unlike Horseshoe Park, the road along Moraine Park is not on the slope, but stays pretty much at the bottom of the slope.  So the view is intermittently blocked by shrubbery and trees.  By now the snow was so deep that the fastest I could drive was ten miles per hour or the hood of the car would plow piles of snow up onto the windshield.  I found a pullout where I could see around some of the clusters of trees well across the valley.

 

I could not believe my eyes!  I was watching a huge herd of elk grazing their way through the snow toward the east.  I rolled down the driver-side window and I could hear them talking to each other.  The high pitched whistles like music coming from all over.  Then in the clearing right beside me, several elk came out of the brush and began grazing within fifty feet of my car.  My camera got real busy.  There was a bull elk with five points on each side of his enormous rack.  There was an aggressive cow that kept chasing other cows away from her chosen spot in the clearing.  By counting a group of ten elk, then counting groups of elk that I could see near and far from my private viewing point, I estimate that I could see three hundred elk at one time.

 

Occasionally, I would see a youngster or two just start running just for the joy of running.  At a distance, I could see that where the stream cut deeply into the floor of the valley, the elk had no trouble going down one bank and up the other whenever they wanted to be on the other side.

 

After about an hour, the herd had all migrated to the east beyond my view.  I decided that I was not going to see any more here and started to pack up my camera.  Dumb move.  Something caught my eye in the nearby clearing.  A coyote was trotting along following the tracks of the herd.  I scrambled to get my camera back out again.  I noticed it perk it's ears up and stare into the snow at it's feet with a sideways tilt of the head.  I knew this was an indication that the coyote suspected a small tasty critter was moving around just below the snow.  I clicked of a photo, then readied for the high leap that was certain to occur.  As it jumped, I snapped off another shot.  The coyote came up from the plunge with a snow covered muzzle, but no dinner and continued to trot along after the heard. 

 

As it got alongside my car, just thirty feet to the left, I snapped off  another shot. I realize now, looking at those two shots, why I still have a long way to go before I think of myself as a professional wildlife photographer.  In my haste, I failed to make sure the focus was perfect.  As a 4x6 print, they look pretty good.  But when I got them enlarged to 8x10, the blur is annoyingly obvious.

 

Then the coyote was nearly gone out of sight behind me so I relaxed and noticed that while I was watching the one pass to my left, another had passed along the road to my right within ten feet of my car.  But I was too late to get that shot.  I watched it in my rear view mirror as it trotted down the middle of the road away from me.  All of a sudden, a cow came charging out of the brush at the coyote in the road and chased it up the opposite slope a short distance, then returned into the brush.  I was content to have witnessed it all, if not having captured it on film.  Had I been out of the car, I would have been able to react quicker, but if I had been out of the car, the coyotes probably would not have come this way, and the event would not have happened.

 

I drove further down the road toward the head of the valley.  I didn't see any more wildlife, but I did see some gorgeous views of the stream meandering through snow covered brush with mountains in the background.  I got some of my favorite scenic shots there.   When I reached the winter closing gate, I turned around and headed for the long uphill road to the Bear Lake parking area.   I got another view of the large herd of elk on the way out.  In fact they were mostly bedded down in an open meadow area giving me another interesting photograph to take.

 

On the way to Bear Lake, I stopped at the ever popular Glacier Basin area.  As I pulled into the parking lot designed to handle hundreds of cars of visitors, I saw no other tire tracks in the snow.  It was late afternoon and I was the first one to arrive here since the snow started last night.  I took a hike around Sprague Lake which was covered with snow on top of ice.  I shot about a roll of film as I picked my way along the eight inch deep snow covering the path.  As I reached three quarters of the way around, I spotted three hikers on the far side of the lake headed in the same direction I had just gone.  They were a good thousand feet away from me, their brightly colored jackets standing out like beacons against the mostly white world.  I could hear their voices well enough to understand some of what they were saying.  They were not shouting; their talking was the only sound to hear.

 

I finished my circuit of the lake and returned to the car to see that a snowplow had come through to clear the roads and the parking lot.  My car had been plowed in with several feet of packed snow, but it fortunately was able to push through.  On up the road to Bear Lake, another 850 feet higher in elevation.  The road had been plowed, so the car was not tunneling under snow anymore, but the plow had not cleared down to pavement so the road was now actually slicker than it had been with the deep snow.  I drove carefully up the slope and did not experience any difficulties.

 

When I got to Bear Lake, there were several cars in the parking lot. Well, I guess I can't have the whole park to my self.  As I started the short hike around Bear Lake, I noticed that the camera light meter is telling me there is not much light left.  It was getting late.  The cliffs on the far side of the lake were there, but it was hard to discern the details.  The sun, hidden behind snow clouds all day, was giving up and going behind the mountain peaks to the west.  I could still see to hike in the diffused light, but I checked anyway  that my Mini-Maglight was functioning and that I knew where the spare batteries were.  I saw a couple of people on the trail now and then but mostly was alone as I finished the loop and returned to the car.

 

As I started the car and turned on the headlights, I discovered that it was much darker than I had expected.  The drive down the hill actually got scary several times as the car's tires lost traction and the car started to slowly rotate.  I kept from panicking, left the brake pedal alone, and steered into the skid.  Then after the direction control was back, I slipped the automatic transmission into a lower gear, then again until I got the speed down to something reasonable for the conditions.  The drive back to town was exhausting, as I worked hard to maintain control on the steep downhill dark icy road.  I resolved to come back earlier the next day so I could hike the trail up from Bear Lake to three more lakes in the alpine country. 

 

I ate dinner at Estes Park Brewery that night.  It was a micro-brewery with dining tables interspersed with pool tables and samples of different flavors of  beer available.  I ordered the best looking dinner on the menu, pizza.

 

The next morning, It was still overcast and still snowing.  Again, no sunrise.  I started out again at Horseshoe Park, to see if my luck with wildlife there would change.  It did.  I saw a herd of about a hundred elk in the valley about four hundred yards away from me.  Two bulls were testing each other's resolve to control the herd.  Got shots of them dueling, heads down, rack to rack, pushing with their powerful necks.  I found it hard to leave for Bear Lake, but I really wanted to take that hike past Nymph Lake and Dream Lake to Emerald Lake.  It had been highly recommended.

I got to the Bear Lake parking lot at noon, and stopped to take a picture of the cliffs across the lake with better light than I had the evening before.  Then I went to the trail leading uphill and to the south of Bear Lake.  I knew it lead up an additional 240 feet altitude to Nymph Lake, then another 200 feet up to Dream Lake at an altitude of 9900 feet.  Emerald Lake  sits at 10100 feet above sea level surrounded by peaks that exceed 12,000 feet.  I started up the trail.  It was amazingly easy to follow because it had been recently traveled by hikers on snowshoes and by cross country skiers.  That left a nice trough with perfectly squared up sides.  The snowshoes had compressed the snow so that I seemed to be walking on top of the snow most of the time, once in a while plunging through up to my shins.

 

The further up I went, the deeper the snow got, and the more often my feet punched through.  It was tiring work.  Because of my lack of adaptation to the altitude, I got winded very quickly.  I was stopping to rest about every ten steps or so.  I heard voices behind me.  I looked and saw a couple of hikers on snow shoes coming up the trail behind me.  They were not making much faster progress than I was, but eventually caught up with me.  We talked for a while at a welcome rest stop, then I let them go first since they were faster.  After about an hour, I got to Nymph Lake,  a distance of maybe a half mile from the parking lot.  The couple of hikers were sitting to the right on a bench by the lake.  They called out to me with a greeting, and said that they had it and were going to turn around and go back down.

 

The trail seemed to go around the lake to the left.  If I had checked my map at that point I would have seen that the trail actually goes around the lake past the bench to the right, but as I decided that I was not ready to call it quits yet, I headed around to the left, following snowshoe tracks.  I had my tripod in my right hand and was using it for balance as I kept alternating between a step that stayed on top of the packed snow and one that punched through to knee deep in the snow.  The trail became very steep and I was stopping every other step to re-catch my breath.  I was several hundred yards past Nymph Lake, wondering if I should turn around or keep trying to fight the deep snow.  Then a guardian angel appeared.

 

Actually it was Dave and Mickie from Colorado Wilderness Sports, a mountaineering gear store in Estes Park.  Dave was field testing a new model of snowshoe to see if his store would be interested in offering them as rentals.  They were coming down the trail toward me.  He took one look at me clawing my way up through the deep snow and said, "What are you doing up here without snowshoes?"  I explained to him how I was trying to get good winter pictures and was keeping a close monitor of my own condition, the weather, and the time of day, and was planning to turn back soon enough to drive back down in daylight this time.  He suggested that I borrow his snowshoes since he was on his way out.  I could drop them off at his store when I was done.  I accepted the offer, and only took one of his ski poles, since I had the tripod in the other hand and he would be better off with one for himself on the way out.  We strapped the shoes onto my boots and as they were going down the trail, I realized that he had not asked me for identification, or deposit, or anything like that.  He just trusted that I would return the equipment to his store in Estes Park.  I could live in a town like that.

 

My first few steps proved to me that snowshoes are the way to travel.  It was so much easier to walk on top of the snow than to keep sinking in like I had been doing that I shouted out for joy.  Of course, there were a few techniques to learn and a few to learn how to avoid.  Did I mention that the scenery was spectacular.  The snow had stopped falling for the first time since I arrived in the park the day before.  I actually saw direct sunlight for a while.  Every now and ten, I would stop to enjoy the view.  While standing there, I would forget that my feet were now fourteen inches wide, each.  I let my feet get too close together and the snow shoes would overlap.  Then I would start to walk and end up doing a face plant in the snow.  Then the technique of getting up would be practiced.

 

When I got to Dream Lake, another two hours had passed and I was beginning to feel continued fatigue in my legs.  I met a couple other hikers who stopped to talk for a while.  Then we all continued to the other end of the lake.  I set up my camera on the tripod to take a shot, and one of the hikers asked if he could look through my viewfinder to see what the shot looked like.  I said sure, and stepped back.  Actually, you don't walk backwards in snowshoes, because the tail drops down into the snow when you lift your foot and as you move backward, it digs in and presto, you are on your back, making a snow angel.

 

When I finally got back up on my feet, I felt really tired, hungry, and thirsty, so I broke out the trail mix and bottle of water.  The trail mix did not seem as appealing as it had earlier.  I had eaten nothing but trail mix all day.  The water was not frozen, but it was certainly cold, and even though I was replacing lost fluids, I could feel my body temperature dropping.  I looked at my cotton pants, they were caked with snow and damp from my body heat.  There was snow down inside my boots.  (Thus my wish list got gaiters added when I returned home.)  I looked at my watch; 3:00 pm.  It had taken me three hours to get this far and therefore I estimated it would take a minimum of another hour to get to Emerald Lake, which would put me in danger of not getting back to the car before dark. 

 

My legs were feeling constant aching from constant work and my body was beginning to occasionally shiver from the cold.  Time to head back.  I discovered how difficult it was to snowshoe down a steep snow slope without falling down.  In fact, I almost made it except one time when the toe of my right snowshoe caught in a tree root.  I was moving down the steep slope, but my foot stopped moving forward as my torso was propelled forward by my momentum.  I ended up with a face plant with my feet up hill and my head down hill; a very embarrassing position.  It took several minutes to extract myself from that one.  So I did not make it to the most beautiful of the lakes, but I did get back to Bear Lake before dark.

 

I decided to take one more look at the cliffs across the lake.  I set up the camera, took a shot, and heard funny giggling coming down the trail toward me.  I looked up to see a young couple walking toward me.  The woman apologized right away for distracting me, the man explained that he had just proposed marriage and she had just said yes.  It was indeed a giddy moment for them.  I offered to take their picture here where the commitment had been made and send them the prints.  They agreed, and offered to pay me for them.  But I explained how I had come to be on snowshoes, and it seemed only right to me to pass on a favor to someone else.

           

 The drive down the mountain was much easier than the night before.  The sun had been shining and had melted much of the snow off the road.  So since it wasn't dark yet, I decided to try driving back up to Many Parks Curve to check out the vistas.  On the way, I spotted a coupled of cars stopped along the roadside with the passengers out all gawking down into a small meadow.  I stopped and looked.  There was a lone bull elk there.  It was the most magnificent creature I had seen yet.  The rack of antlers was easily six feet long with six points on each side.  His thick neck looked like all the muscle power that could possible be gathered in one place.  I watched and photographed in the fading light for half an hour.

 

At Many Parks Curve, I could see all the snowed in valleys that I had been in over the last two days.  The panorama was incredible, with the snow covered peaks in all directions, including Longs Peak high above to the south.   As the darkness finally started to arrive in force, I returned to Estes Park, Found Colorado Wilderness Sports at 358 Elkhorn and dropped off the snowshoes.  Dave and Mickie were not there, but the salesman said he had been told to expect me.   When you are in town, visit these people, buy or rent something from them.  They are nice folks.

 

I had dinner next door at Ed's Cantina & Grill.  When I entered the restaurant, I was greeted by the hostess.  I said, "One for dinner."  She asked what kind of dinner I was looking for, and I said "Anything that tastes better than trail mix."

 

                     --   Bob Kuhns