You simply can’t help it: your eyes scan a panorama of mountain peaks and valleys, of the 4,346-metre-high Longs Peak and of 71 other mountains more than 4,000 metres tall. Snow-capped peaks, yellow- and blue-coloured mountain pastures where deer and antelope graze, raging streams fed by the melting snow, meadows of wildflowers and lush green grass. Your eyes want to absorb every detail of this great and glorious landscape.
This is the world of the Rockies.
More than three million visitors come each year to marvel at the natural beauty of what is the largest—at 1,076 sq km—and highest-elevation national park in the US. People love the moderate temperatures, fill their lungs with the pure high-altitude air and go hiking to restore body and soul.
It is all thanks to one man, Enos Mills, that people today can enjoy this part of the mountains. He is called the “Father of the Rocky Mountain National Park”. Today, people tracing his trail will head to Estes Park, about an hour-and-a-half drive north-west of Denver. A few miles away awaits Eryn Mills to greet visitors at the log cabin, now a museum, that had belonged to her great-grandfather.
“That must have been the happiest day in his life,” Eryn says, pointing to a yellowing old photograph showing Enos Mills surrounded by dignitaries. The date was September 5, 1915. The occasion was the inauguration of the national park.
“Enos initially came to the Rocky Mountains as a 14-year-old to spend a few months enjoying the clean mountain air and recover from tuberculosis,” Eryn says. “But the beauty of the landscape overwhelmed him and after he met naturalist John Muir in 1889, he never got over the idea of creating a national park.”
Fortunately for this region, never was any gold or other valuable minerals or metals found here to be mined. The long winter at elevations of over 3,000 metres also was not exactly ideal for farming. So Enos was able to convince locals about the idea of developing tourism for the region.
Between 1909 and 1915 Enos held countless lectures around the US, wrote newspaper articles and books, and eventually garnered the financial support of companies in successfully lobbying US Congress in 1915 to approve the national park. With the First World War raging in Europe, and as automobiles began to become more widespread, many Americans warmed to the idea of exploring their own country’s attractions.
Enos and his wife Esther were among the early guides leading tourists on the trails. Today, their successors are guides like Andy Barkley. One of his favourite hikes is a climb 600 metres up to Fern Lake. Huge boulders left behind by glaciers line the trail. Raging streams race through moist areas where aspen trees and wild flowers are growing. The forests are chiefly pines and Douglas firs, while spray from waterfalls moisten the nearby ferns.
At the lake, squirrels and chipmunks keep a watchful eye out for tidbits left over from the picnic lunches of the hikers, while trout anglers try out their skills at fly-fishing. Anything they catch they throw back into the water. A pleasant quietude descends on the setting as evening approaches.
A few of the campers are wondering about wild animals, but Andy reassures them, “The brown bears and wolves that once lived here were ruthlessly wiped out during the pioneering period. Only now and then you might come across a puma.”
The next day, Erik Stensland, a nature photographer, confirms this. He knows every corner of the park and countless times has hiked its more than 560 km of trails. Often, he will start out at midnight so as to be able to make his most dramatic pictures in the rays of the rising sun.
“During one night-time hike I came across a pair of pumas. It took a lot of wild gesticulating and shouting before they decided to slip off into the bushes,” he said.
In Breckenridge, visitors are confronted with the other, darker, side of the Rockies. Guide Ronnie Picariello takes you through a landscape of devastation, piles upon piles of rocks and slate from mining.
“In 1887, after gold miners found a 13-pound chunk of gold in French Gulch, there began the reckless excavation of the streams and rivers around Breckenridge,” he says. “Gradually we are carrying away the slag heaps, but the traces of arsenic, quicksilver and natrium cyanide used for the gold processing will continue to contaminate the soil for a long time to come.”