Kelly was a busy girl this weekend. On Sunday we took a scenic drive along Colorado state route 40 from Denver to the Rocky Mountain National Park. We stopped along the way to hike in the Indian Peaks wilderness. We took a nice mellow hike along the Columbine Lake trail. (My camera broke, so I stole the image from the web).
The drive along route 40 wound through beautiful wooded canyons and over high mountain passes. The colors ranged from the expected greens, yellows and golds to a peculiar new color. Huge stretches orange trees. The site was pretty, although a bit unnatural looking. Unfortunately the orange signifies death. An unprecedented infestation of tiny flying beetles has put the great forests of the Mountain West under siege. Tens of millions of Colorado's mature pine trees will die within the next few years. Federal and state forest managers have conceded defeat. It is believed that the recent regional warming in the Rocky Mountains and the prolonged Western drought has supercharged the life cycle of these rice sized dark-brown tree killers. Once beetle eggs are deposited, within a week or two, thousands of larvae emerge and begin eating the tree. Within a month, the tree is dead. In the White River National Forest in central Colorado, as many as 90% of the pines across 2.2 million acres are expected to die.
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