Picks and Pans – Rocky Mountain National Park

Although the facilities are limited (cold water sinks, flush toilets) and the price is a little steep ($20 per night when water is on), this tent-only campsite’s location more than makes up for it. Our campsite was perched on the edge of a foothill with a clear view of the Twin Sisters peaks and the starry sky at night. Plus, we were a short walk away from the trailhead for both of the spectacular hikes we took while in the park.

Since the starting elevation for most hikes in RMNP is around 9000′, we decided to give ourselves a chance to acclimate a little with a shorter hike before we tackled the the harder Keyhole hike. The Estes Cone hike was around 6 miles round trip, with an elevation gain of around 2000′. The hike itself kept us in the trees for most of the time, but the view from the 11,000′ summit was super. We had a great time hopping around the rocky peak identifying landmarks from our map across the panoramic view. Plus, we were hoping that our time at the top would give the signal for our bones to pump out a few more precious red blood cells for our big trek the next day.

Let me just say that this expedition was epic. Our early morning started out in the trees, but as the trail rose through the krummholz (I just added this word to my vocabulary and am pretty excited about it) we realized that the majority of our 13 mile journey would be in alpine territory. We walked through beautiful alpine wildflowers, spotted marmots gorging on tundra flora, made our way across snowfields and trudged up a creek bed until we finally reached the Boulderfield and a view of the Keyhole, our 13,160′ goal. I followed the marmot tracks through the snow to try to avoid falling through (a fairly successful strategy) while Sean opted for the snow-avoidance boulder hopping technique. We eventually were scrambling on all fours up the last bit of the rocky ascent. The arrival at the Keyhole was utterly startling. One moment I was looking for handholds and staring at the rock ahead of me and the next moment I’m looking across the other side as the mountain makes a sheer drop to reveal the glacial lakes in the valley far below. What a rare privelege to be able to look across the seemingly endless mountain peaks from the top. And incredibly enough, from the time we reached the Boulderfield until we arrived at the Keyhole and for the entire return journey through the boulders (a total time of nearly 2 hours), we didn’t see a single other person. We later learned from rangers that this solitude is rare later in the summer and the “technical” rating is dropped for the trek from Keyhole to Longs Peak and all the sporty folks come out in droves to tackle this “14er”.

This unexpected laundry/shower combo was a little hard to find (it’s tucked away in the corner of the Estes Park Safeway parking lot) and the showers were a bit on the expensive side (6 bucks a piece), but after two full days of hiking we were willing to drop the cash for chance to shed our protective coating of sunscreen, dirt and sweat.

It was a beautiful Wednesday morning in Rocky Mountain National Park. We left our campsite and were driving West through the park, stopping at overlooks to admire the beauty and take a few pictures. We arrived at the Rock Cut/Tundra Communities pullout and strolled up the paved path past fencing and signs to stay off the delicate tundra ecosystems. A short way up, I pulled out my camera to take a picture of the serene tundra, but looking at the LCD screen I found a boy galloping across it. Now, if you want to see juxtaposed respect and blatant disrespect of nature, National Parks are the place to go, but this was taking it a bit far… go ahead and trample on the flowers in your front yard or wherever, but this is MY National Park that I pay for. So I called out to the kid “Hey kid, get off’a there. Where’s your parents? How’d you like it if someone trampled on you?” The kid sheepishly made his way off the tundra and his sister said “I told you you’d get in trouble”. I continued taking pictures and walking up the path and an older gentleman commended me with “I’m glad somebody said something”. Thirty seconds or so past before a woman came storming up the path yelling at me. The exact words escape me, but it was something like “You a–hole, what’s your f—ing problem… don’t go yelling and swearing at my kid… he’s only 9 years old and didn’t know any better… you could have made an educational experience instead of being an a–hole.” Okay lady, first off, I didn’t swear at your kid; and according to what his sister said, he did know better; and he’s 9 years old, he could have read the signs; and if he didn’t know better, who’s fault is that but yours; and what kind of educational experience does he get from you cursing at me? I didn’t have all these things readily in mind as I was a little startled by the aggressiveness of the woman, soI began politely, but assertively explaining that we need to have respect for the beauty of this National Park land and that it was her job to explain that to her child, I was just controlling the damage. The woman continued yelling at me for some time and finally I walked away, at which point she yelled “I’m sure you’ll make a terrible parent someday.

A few seconds later a man came running up the hill yelling at me “Stay away from my wife.” I turned around to find an athletic, medium build man in his mid to late 40s, fists clenched and shaking with anger. He’d clearly not seen any of the prior activity except the fact that I had been engaged in argument with his wife. Seeing that this guy was just itching to fight, I maintained my distance while defensively explaining that his wife approached me and that I just told the kid to stay off the tundra. He went on yelling and cursing at me and I went on explaining for some time until I briefly lost eye contact with him and, WHAM, he hauled off and punched me in the chin. Looking back, I think it was more of a “c’mon, make a move so I can beat the crap out of you” than a knock-out type punch, but it did manage to split my chin open and probably gave me a mild concussion because I had a momentary flash of light take over my vision and a headache that lasted for a couple days. Despite the innate rage induced by being punched in the face, a quick calculation — this guy was probably close to 20lbs heavier than me with an atheletic build and based on his demeanor has probably punched a number of faces in recent years, while I think the last time I hit someone was in 8th grade — revealed the need for substantial luck in finding justice through physical means. Instead I backed away somewhat stunned and said something like “he hit me!” At this point Erica jumped in between us and diffused the situation, saying “Okay, this is over. You go on and have a nice walk in the park.” I wanted to pull out my camera to get a picture of these yahoos, but figured that would only escalate the situation and leave me with a broken camera as well as a broken face. Yelling and cursing a few more times, the pair walked up the path and we walked down to the car. There weren’t any rangers around (as we later found out was thanks to 8 years of budget cuts), cleaned up my chin and waited for the perpetrators to come back to their car so we could get a picture of their license plate. The benevolent wife of an off-duty park volunteer found us and offered to come with us to the ranger station to make a witness statement and we spent much of the rest of the day dealing with legal hassles in the ranger station. I managed to overhear a random guy in the ranger station say “If he hadn’t said anything to that kid, none of it would’ve happened”… true, and if we let all our criminals loose, we wouldn’t need jails… I’ll send ’em over to your house, jerk. Turns out the perpetrator’s car was a rental from Denver airport and at this point it seems unlikely that this animal will be caught. Just another unfortunate day for justice, but the real tragedy here is that these kids are going to walk away thinking that if someone does something that you don’t like, you should just punch ’em in the face.