Spring Hiking in Rocky

Story and photos by Dave Rusk

I lean the garden rake against the snow shovel, but I keep the snow shovel handy. This spring, while much of Colorado is experiencing drought-like conditions, we have been getting weekly snowstorms. At Bear Lake, where the snow level has fluctuated between 45 and 60 inches, the snowpack is barely hanging onto near normal conditions after a less than snowy winter. On any given day, I might be clearing pine needles away in the morning in anticipation of new grass shoots popping up and sweeping snow off the deck by the afternoon.

Over the years of photographing in Rocky Mountain National Park, I have developed a record of when certain signs of spring begin to emerge. On April 7th in 2015, I was photographing mountain blue violets and Oregon grape on the Fern Lake trail. I have photos from the 4th of May in 2016 of Nelson larkspur in full bloom. I photographed catkins blooming on a group of cottonwood trees near the Park headquarters as early as February 20th in 2017, that was a bit alarming! In 2018, I was laying on the ground on March 22 photographing the Easter daisies blooming.

Longs Peak

Photo by Dave Rusk

But this year, we are having a late spring. My first wildflower spotting was a Sagebrush Buttercup on the 10th of April. I only saw a few Easter daisies blooming on the last day of April during my trek around Lumpy Ridge, though I know Marlene Borneman had spotted them earlier in the month. As we entered the Beltane on May 1, halfway between the Spring Equinox and the Summer Solstice, those cottonwood trees near the Park headquarters were only starting to flower with their catkins.

And I just went and checked on the larkspur. The first leaves have appeared, but it looks like we won't see any flower blooms until late May at the earliest. It's hard not to get anxious for warm days and spring flowers, but I can also see beautiful early summer green and full mountain streams from all of our spring snows.

Budding aspen leaves

Photo by Dave Rusk

Spring is arguably the most exciting time of the year in the Park. There is no other time when the extremes of elevation become more distinct as in the spring. In the Park, spring moves up in elevation along with the longer days. While the elk move into the lush green meadow of Moraine Park, hikers are post-holing in deep snow up the Flattop Mtn trail. After the Rocky Mountain iris bloom along the burgeoning Big Thompson River at 8,100 feet, the alpine forget-me-nots begin to bloom at 11,000.

Rocky Mountain iris

Photo by Dave Rusk

But winter does not loosen its grip easily above 9,000 feet. When I hiked to Alberta Falls at 9,394 , on the 20th of April, the falls were nowhere to be found, they were still completely buried under snow. Even though the snow had softened in the afternoon from the mild temperature of that day, the way the snow hung from tree branches, the surrounding terrain looked like it might as well have been February.

A week later, I was hit with a blast of strong, steady wind on a hike to Bierstadt Lake, the kind of winds we often get in the depths of winter, but it lacked the bitterness of a mid-winter wind. Walking along the trail in the snow covered landscape, tall slender lodgepole pines swayed back and forth in the wild wind, like a packed crowd at a Queen concert singing out, “We will, we will rock you!” The raging wind careening across the lake almost rocked me over once I got to the northeast shoreline. A small patch of open water along the shore provided the only sign that winter was beginning to loosen its grip on the ice-covered lake.

Sprague Lake

Photo by Dave Rusk

Each hike this spring required watching the weather to catch the sunny day of the week between snow squalls, squalls that would drop anywhere from 6-16” of snow on the region. At lower elevations, snow would fall for a few days covering the ground, and then melt into the ground a couple of days later, repeating the cycle weekly.

On the last day of April this year, I went for a low elevation hike along the base of Lumpy Ridge, determined to walk the 10.7 mile long loop ending at the Gem Lake trail. Earlier in the week, another decent snow had fallen on us, and while the landscape along the south side of Lumpy Ridge basking in morning sun was snow free, the Diamond of Longs Peak looked like a face peeking out of a white hoody, the spring snow saturating the shoulders of the peak with pure alpine mountain moisture.

Spring aspen

Photo by Dave Rusk

The trail stayed mostly snow free as I climbed through the Ponderosa Pine forest at the south west end of Lumpy Ridge. But once at trail swung around to the back side of Lumpy, at the junc on with the Black Canyon trail, snow covered the path that cut across the north facing slope in dense Douglas fir and Engelmann Spruce, reflec ng the cooler and we er microenvironment. Previous snowshoe tracks helped to pack the trail, but I stepped lightly to keep from postholing through the softening snow. Once I reached the creek bottom, the trail crossed over to a more sun-friendly slope and the snow quickly disappeared, along with the dense forest.

A side trip to Bridal Veil Falls proved to be an icy affair. The falls were flowing stronger with daily snowmelt with snow and ice forming around the base of the falls like a broken bowl leaking water. The Bridal Veil side trip added two more miles to an already long early season hike. While the hiking was very pleasant along the Cow Creek trail, I began to wonder if I had made a mistake by leaving the climb out of the Cow Creek drainage up to Gem Lake for the end of the day. It was a grueling 2.8 mile uphill grind, with the first 1.6 miles to the Balanced Rock trail cut off being especially exhausting. It was kind of a brutal wake up call to my lazy winter muscles.

American dipper at Bridal Veil Falls

Photo by Dave Rusk

But I wanted to end the warm spring day taking in the stupendous vistas from the Gem Lake trail, and I was not disappointed. Dragging the last steps over the top of the trail, the small Gem of a pond, surrounded by rounded granite walls, was smooth and reflective with snowy Twin Sisters perfectly framed by the descending rock walls at the outlet of the pond. Stopping for my final rest at the open rock slabs that overlook all of the Estes Valley, Longs Peak with its snowy white shoulders glowed magnificently in the late day sunlight. I soaked it all in while I poured the last of my water down my parched throat.

Early in the season, I often like to hike the Fern Lake trail to The Pool, or the Cub Lake trail, or sometimes the Beaver Mountain loop that looks over the green meadows of Moraine Park through fluttering aspen leaves. These lower elevation trails are some of the first to become snow-free. But this spring, these trails and others in the Park will remain closed, probably for the remainder of the summer, due to the East Troublesome Fire from last fall.

Blue larkspur

Photo by Dave Rusk

(It is worth noting here that, even though the conditions last fall were obviously primed for a rapid spread of fire, the fire was not a naturally-caused fire. The Forest Service has confirmed that it was human caused, although the exact cause remains under investigation. While fire is part of the natural process and these burned areas will heal, it will take a generation or more for the rejuvenation to be complete. It appears that this was an avoidable event, but unfortunately one that is much too common these days.)

The other morning, while the song of a spring robin floated sweetly through my open window, I was reading a tweet from the National Weather Service in Boulder calling for another winter storm watch. That night, big spring flakes floated down, drifting back and forth while they slowly fell, like a million light and fluffy feathers falling from the breast of a goose. There was a lot of water in those goose feathers collecting on the tree branches and the next day, as the sun came back out, the feathers melted together and dropped like water balloons, splattering on the ground below. I had to be careful where I walked.

Dave Rusk has been sauntering and taking photographs through Rocky Mountain National Park for decades. He is the author & publisher of Rocky Mountain Day Hikes, a book of 24 hikes in Rocky, and the website of the same name. He is the publisher of HIKE ROCKY Magazine and an important content contributor to all of these endeavors.