Last week, on top of Trail Ridge Road, one of the highest roads in the country, there were still snow drifts 10 feet high. This unusually late snow has become a tourist attraction in Rocky Mountain National Park, with visitors from all over the world—Indiana to India— posing for pictures in front of the walls of snow and etching their names and other marks (below) in it.
Despite the snow, the tundra’s native animals were active, searching for food and being playful with each other after nine months of of hibernation. The marmots (below, right), which some tourists thought were beavers) could be spotted running across the tundra, their long, bushy tails bobbing.
The smaller pikas (above left), one of the cutest animals around, are harder to see because they blend in so well with the talus piles they inhabit. These animals, which are related to rabbits, technically don’t hibernate but munch all winter long on the grass they collected the previous summer. Because they mainly survive at high mountan elevations, which are getting warmer, they are threatened by climate change. A researcher interviewed on NPR’s Science Friday last week said pikas can’t tolerate temperatures above 75 degrees. Unfortunately, they are also threatened by drought, which has been prevalent for the past few years across the West. When there’s not enough snowpack to insulate their winter nests, they can freeze.
Luckily this year we’ve had record snowfalls, but that also means a shorter growing season and less time to gather the grasses the pikas will need for next winter. But life has always been precarious and fragile at these extreme altitudes (10,000 to 12,000 feet in the park), with all forms of life having a short time span to breed or flower, produce the next generation, and then get ready for winter, which can come as early as September.
With the late snow, last week I didn’t expect to see any tundra flowers, which usually appear in late June, just as or after the snows melt. Where the ground was open, it seemed bare and brown—lifeless. But when we stopped the car to take a picture, I was amazed, first, to see the alpine avens, a brilliant yellow flower that blooms at the edge of snowfields. When my eyes scanned beyond it, I saw a familiar and welcoming blue: the tiny alpine forget-me-nots (above). In this cold, almost barren landscape, these flowers hug the ground, exhibiting some will to survive—as well as beauty—that is almost unfathomable.
Comments
You can follow this conversation by subscribing to the comment feed for this post.