Lull of the wild

Animals elude summer hikers, but the grand vistas of park do not

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Timing is key

Early one spring morning on a previous visit, I looked out the window of my motel room and saw two elk feeding in the grass, perhaps 50 yards away. The evening before I had encountered elk crossing the road in Estes Park.

Not this trip.

Some of the area's 3,000 elk can be found in lower elevations during the summer, Boyer said. Estes Park golf courses are likely candidates for sightings - all that grass. A good time to see them is between dusk and dark. But, for the most part, the elk move up into higher elevations for summer starting in May.

"It's mainly because of the cooler temperatures at the higher elevations and because it's their natural migratory pattern, which they've been following for thousands of years," said Kyle Patterson, the park information officer. "They actually have vegetation they can eat at a variety of locations."

By the end of August, depending on temperatures, the animals will begin working their way down to lower elevations.

"Then at the beginning or middle of September the rut starts, when the bulls start gathering their harems," Patterson said. "They start gathering in large groups again.

"For most of the year the bulls are on their own and the cows are on their own. In the fall you start to see the big herds again."

As fall moves into winter, it will be tough not to find an elk at Rocky Mountain National Park.

"Winter is our quietest time as far as visitation is concerned," Patterson said, "but it's a great time to see wildlife because they are more visible during the day. There aren't as many people they are reacting to.

"We obviously have some animals that hibernate in winter, but the vast majority of the wildlife here do not hibernate, so you'll see them or you'll see their tracks."

You're not alone

The park roads and parking lots are jammed all summer - Rocky Mountain park received more than 2.9 million visitors last year, making it the sixth most-popular among national parks.

But even here the crowds tend to thin out along the trails - the farther you walk, the fewer people you'll encounter and the greater chances you'll find something wild, say, at least a mule deer.

But if you don't see any wildlife, well, it's not exactly as if you're settling. The trails are spectacular - filled with the scent of pine and spruce, cooled by the thick canopy of trees.

On the way to Alberta Falls, a popular destination about a mile's walk from Bear Lake, I met a family from Washington state, where I imagined this kind of scenery is a little more common than it is in, say, Kansas and Missouri.

"No, this is majesty," the mother told me, as the falls thundered down Glacier Creek behind her. "And you never get tired of majesty."

Animals or not, I couldn't argue.

The central part of the park is rich with hiking trails. I counted more than 15 destinations within five miles of Bear Lake on my map. I headed west along a path that would lead to three lakes in just less than two miles.

"Around every corner is a different, amazing view," said Pam Koppen of Leawood, who had been hiking around Nymph Lake, the lowest of the three lakes, with her husband, Bill Koppen; their sons, Gus and Sam; and her parents, Warren and Pat Werner of Lake St. Louis, Mo.

She was right, as I found out again and again.

Nymph Lake was covered in water lilies, many of them topped with delicate yellow flowers. At Dream Lake, another half-mile up the trail, spotted greenback cutthroat trout swam in water so crystal clear that I was tempted several times to reach in and try to grab one. Dream Lake is a popular catch-and-release fishing spot.

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