Welcoming Winter

At the cabin this week, I went for a walk in nearby Wild Basin. It was a cold and windy day, with a few inches of snow on the ground, and the creek was beginning to freeze. I couldn’t have asked for a more perfect day.

Just to be on this familiar trail again was a treat because Wild Basin, the southernmost part of Rocky Mountain National Park and just a few miles from my cabin, has been inaccessible almost all summer either because of the fires or the pandemic restrictions. The icing on the cake was that the weather was what it should be  for November. Very little this year has been normal, including our hot and dry weather  that led to our destructive wildfires in October. Two weeks ago at the cabin, temperatures were in the 60s—at least 20 degrees warmer than the average for the beginning of winter here.

But winter, which our local weather expert defines as between October and May in the mountains, is finally taking hold here. At Wild Basin, Copeland Falls was partially frozen, the narrow channel of falling winter fringed by small ice sculptures. The pond below the falls was a sheet of pale green ice covered by a few inches of smooth and silky water.

Enjoying the soft snow underfoot, I walked along the river—a ribbon of water that looped gracefully and quietly between clumps of ice and rocks topped with knots of snow. The air was fresher and cleaner than it had been for months, maybe since last spring. It felt good just to breathe.

Although some areas of the park are still closed because firefighters are  checking on hot spots and determining the damage, some of the outlying areas, like Wild Basin, opened last week. Another place that had been closed most of the summer was Twin Owls, where smoke was visible in September and October from the Cameron Peak fire over the next ridge.

But last week, there was no signs of smoke unless you mistook the plumes of snow whipping off the high peaks for evidence of fire. But it was just the winds—our normal winter winds that can often gust at 60 mph—streaming off the back side of Longs Peak and the range of mountains that extends to Mount Bierstadt.

The weather forecast for this winter is not good: warmer temperatures and less snow. It’s not good for skiers, not good for water users and not good for the West as a whole, which is experiencing a severe to extreme drought. Could next summer bring worse fires?  

 Bring on the cold. Bring on the snow.

Comments

[shoney]

I really enjoyed this piece---but even more, the photos bring me right into the Rockies. Thank you.

[Brent]

Bring on the cold. Bring on the snow.

[Julene Bair]

Love that picture of the ice ledge with sticks and stones lying on it. Your pictures are always just stunning. I wish all people could see the beauty that you see. If they did, maybe they would take climate change seriously. Maybe they wouldn't carve their initials or hearts into the bark of trees.