Rocky Mountain National 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.

What doors will the culling of elk in Rocky Mountain National Park open? Is it possible that, in the wake of sharpshooters turning up shortly before sunrise in Rocky Mountain to shoot an elk or two, similar "management" actions will pop up in places like Yellowstone, Theodore Roosevelt, or Wind Cave national parks, or any other park where the natural balance of wildlife is skewed?

Bullets, not wolves, worked on culling the elk herds in Rocky Mountain National Park on Wednesday with sharpshooters taking down one cow.

"Culling." It's a fairly innocuous word. Look it up in the dictionary and one of the definitions you'll find is "to remove rejected members or parts from (a herd, for example)." Use that word in the context of a national park and, well, that could spur some discussion, if not outright controversy since "natural processes" are supposed to rule in the National Park System.

"l ain't never seen them, but my common sense tells me the Andes is foothills, and the Alps is for children to climb." So said mountain man Del Gue in one of the memorable lines from Jeremiah Johnson. He was, of course, comparing those mountains to the Rocky Mountains.

A 55-year-old Colorado man out snowshoeing with his family Saturday in Rocky Mountain National Park collapsed and died on the Longs Peak Trail.

A massive lands bill introduced today by Senator Jeff Bingaman would, if passed by Congress and signed by the president, designate hundreds of thousands of acres of official wilderness across the National Park System.

Don't use Trail Ridge Road in Rocky Mountain National Park as a climate change gauge. While snows have closed the road for the season, a check of past years shows this year's closure is neither particularly late nor early.

A backcountry skier has died in an accident in Rocky Mountain National Park. The 40-year-old was skiing alone on Taylor Glacier and reported missing late Tuesday.

So much for taking only pictures and leaving only footprints. Some climbers in Rocky Mountain National Park have been leaving behind crash pads so they don't have to haul them in and out of the park every time they want to go bouldering. Tsch, tsch.

Nearly 50 years after the thwack of a golf club meeting a little white ball could be heard near Rocky Mountain National Park, the remnants of the 9-hole course are being erased by park crews.

In the last week, more than $3 million in donations and grants have been announced to help Rocky Mountain, Yellowstone, and Big Bend national parks with a wide range of projects, from habitat restoration to trails work.

A Colorado man has died in a 500-foot fall down a steep, snow-covered slope in Rocky Mountain National Park.

The American Marten is a rare North Woods animal that you'll probably never see, save for paw prints in the snow. This brown, bushy-tailed little critter, which looks something like a cross between a mink and a house-cat, was prized for its luxurious fur and darn near trapped to extinction in the United States during the 19th century. Today, despite habitat losses and related problems, the American Marten still inhabits much of its historical range.

We love our cars, we love our parks, and we love to drive our cars in the parks. Well, at least when the traffic isn’t too bad, and we really don’t mind just going along for the ride. The windshield touring season is nearly here, so it’s time to start thinking about park trips. All of the national parkways are recommended. Here are a dozen other traverses, loops, and shuttles that belong on your short list.

Wolves, not bullets, should be used to cull the elk herds that move through Rocky Mountain National Park, according to a lawsuit filed against the Interior Department and National Park Service.

How do you like your fish seasoned? A little mercury, perhaps some DDT? That's what you might get if you eat fish caught in national parks in the American West.

If a wolf turns up in Rocky Mountain National Park, it will be protected by the Endangered Species Act. But plans by the Bush administration to remove ESA protection from Yellowstone's wolves could make it incredibly hard for the predators to migrate down to Colorado.

A wolf advocacy group says it plans to sue Rocky Mountain National Park officials over their elk reduction plan. WildEarth Guardians says returning wolves to the park is the best way to control its elk population.

Though a relatively short drive from Denver, and joined at the hip to the bustling gateway town of Estes Park, Rocky Mountain National Park is a pretty wild place.

A paw print 4 inches across is a tantalizing piece of evidence that indicates gray wolves just might be returning on their own to Rocky Mountain National Park.