Rocky Mountain National Park

A solitary hiker fell to his death from Longs Peak in Rocky Mountain National Park, officials reported Friday. Park officials were trying to determine whether the victim was a Colorado man who had failed to return from his trek up the 14,259-foot peak.

Experiencing our national parks’ grandeur from the saddle of a road bike is a bit like summiting a high peak. The arduous pedal through the park is rewarded with the scenery and equally thrilling descent from the park roads’ high points. Fall is sublime for cycling in national parks, so with the season quickly approaching, now is the time to experience the Mountain West’s greatest national park road cycling routes.

On a recent Monday, as I was hiking near treeline in a quiet part of Rocky Mountain National Park, I rounded a corner to see a gigantic bull elk. He hadn’t seen me, but ran down the open hillside to a creek, where he pawed at the water and thrashed at it with his antlers, sending up silver curves of droplets and a splashing sound through the small valley. He then slowed to drink.

A Colorado woman hiking near Odessa Lake in Rocky Mountain National Park died after falling 25-50 feet into a creek.

There's little worse than a successful summit of a classic Colorado 14er than suffering an injury on the way down. But thanks to being prepared and thinking calmly, an Illinois man will heal and no doubt notch many more summits following a tumble on the flanks of Longs Peak in Rocky Mountain National Park.

If you'll be near Estes Park, Colorado, on Monday and you've ever been curious about how a U.S. Senate Subcommittee hearing looks in person instead on C-SPAN, here's your chance.

Some high-tech equipment and old-fashioned stamina were both put to good use when a 73-year-old visitor suffered a heart attack in the backcountry at Rocky Mountain National Park. How the park bookstores played a role in the outcome might surprise you.

Natural events — wildfires, floods, windstorms — often leave behind obvious marks on the landscapes they touch. Charred trees and scorched meadows, washed out trails, and swaths of fallen trees are some of the reminders of these powerful forces. The impacts wrought by other naturally occurring events and cycles are not always so easy to discern.

A hiker at Rocky Mountain National Park suffered a broken leg in a fall in the park's backcountry. He and rangers spent the night on a rocky slope above 12,000 feet before he was flown to a Denver hospital on Sunday afternoon.

A Colorado man within sight of the summit of Longs Peak in Rocky Mountain National Park died Monday from a cardiac episode. It was not immediately known whether the 62-year-old from Durango, who was in the so-called "homestretch" area en route to the summit of the 14,259-foot peak, had summited.

If you're visiting Rocky Mountain National Park this summer, you might want to plan on entering from the eastern side, rather than enduring construction delays and bumpy travel on the western end of Trail Ridge Road.

A wolverine has made an amazing journey and turned up in an unexpected place.

Streamside photos in the Rocky Mountains definitely are photogenic, but the footing can be tricky, as an Oklahoma woman learned Monday after falling into a snowmelt-filled stream in Rocky Mountain National Park.

There's been some discussion on this site in recent months about the need for parks to be more proactive in terms of safety and accident prevention. At least one park has done so in terms of vehicle safety, and another will try to reduce risks on the road for the July 4 weekend.

Shuttle bus systems are growing in popularity as one way to reduce the impacts of private vehicles on parks—and on the experience of visitors. Here's a look at some of those systems at NPS sites around the country.

In the early 1900s, some national parks existed, but getting to them was problematic. Then was born the idea to develop a "National Park-to-Park Highway," one that would run through 11 states and connect 13 national parks.

A 57-year-old Colorado man was hauled out of Rocky Mountain National Park's backcountry in a hand-carried litter Tuesday night in a grueling evacuation.

"Don't feed the bears" is hardly new advice, but whether bears get "people food" due to irresponsible handouts or by raiding campsites, the result is the same: trouble. To help with this problem, new rules for backcountry campers went into effect on May 1st at Rocky Mountain National Park.

To what lengths should national parks go to combat climate change? Do such efforts run contrary to the National Park Service's mission, to let natural processes run their course? And in some cases, are those efforts akin to turning back a flood with a rake?

If you're heading to Rocky Mountain National Park this week you just might want to pack some snowshoes or skis. This past weekend's snowstorm dumped roughly 4 feet of snow in the park!

Winter continues to deliver a few well-placed, late-season kicks to Rocky Mountain National Park, where plow crews are struggling to keep up with nearly 3 feet of snow that have fallen in some areas of the park in the past 24 hours.

Here at the Traveler we've written quite a bit about mountain pine beetle attacks on forests in the Rockies, as well as wilderness issues. Well, over at the Rocky Mountain Nation Podcast you can listen to similar stories.

A massive lands bill, one that would have added nearly 1 million acres of national park lands to the national wilderness system, has failed to gain passage in the U.S. House of Representatives. But it could live to see another vote.

It was a long, no doubt treacherous, journey, but a young wolf from Yellowstone National Park's wolf recovery program has made it down into Colorado.

Though winter is far from spent in the Rockies, the folks at Rocky Mountain National Park say they have accomplished their goals in terms of removing elk from the park's herds for this winter.

A massive outbreak of mountain pine beetles, which are efficient killers of lodgepole pine trees, is forcing Rocky Mountain National Park officials to reduce campground sites this summer as they work to mitigate the beetles' impacts.