Some Areas in Rocky Mountain National Park Will Be Set on Fire on Wednesday — Here’s How It Helps

Commoners think that forests evolve with rain. But only natural scientists know that, more than rain, forests evolve with fire. For a forest, fire is not the end; it’s a new beginning. This goes especially true for Rocky Mountain National Park, which has, over thousands of years, evolved with fire. Each time, the park’s towering alpine slopes and patches of dry grasses come in contact with erratic winds and lightning strikes, the dramatic chemistry of intense heat and moisture triggers a sea of leaping flames that climb like blazing snakes to engulf all those ponderosa pines, aspens, pine beetles, lodgepoles, and firs, reducing them to bare ashes.

While wildland fires are nature’s own way to support a forest’s awakening and evolution, the only negative thing about them is that they are unpredictable. They erupt without warning. To control these unforeseen fires, fire managers at Rocky are now planning to ignite a prescribed fire on Wednesday, November 19th, if conditions are right, according to a recent report by NPS.

Rocky Mountain National Park is a prestigious jewel preserving the glory of the southern Rockies, whose pendant dangles in the north central Colorado, winding and meandering across a 300-mile trail, with hundreds of peaks towering more than 10,000 feet. In the coming days, residents staying near these trails, as well as in the surrounding campgrounds, Grand Lake, or the historic Stanley Hotel, could witness swirls of smoke billowing around them, as firefighters burn down the park’s grasses.

This episode, NPS describes, is a reminder of the 2020 East Troublesome Fire and the 2012 Fern Lake Fire, when firefighters were able to take advantage of previous and existing prescribed fire and hazardous fuels treatment areas that provided a “buffer between the fire and the town of Estes Park.” These fire episodes were instrumental in stopping the fire from jumping Bear Lake Road and Trail Ridge Road. In the current project, fire managers are planning to burn up around 294 acres of the park, if conditions allow.

Since only minute grasses and shrubs are expected to burn in the process, too much smoke is not expected. The main goal, according to the park service, is just to reduce the threat of coming wildland fires or uncontrolled fires provoked by fire suppression. The estimated area that will be covered by this burn will most likely include the west of the Beaver Meadows Visitor Center and near Upper Beaver Meadows Road. The date for the prescribed fire has been decided with careful planning and strategy of the fire managers who have closely tracked the relative humidity, fuel moisture, and other weather conditions with the help of on-site weather stations, handheld instruments, and sampling of live and dead fuels.

During the blaze, certain areas of the park will remain closed, including the US Highway 36 from Deer Ridge Junction to Bear Lake Road Junction, which will be temporarily shut down from 9 am to 5 pm. Beavers Meadows Entrance and Bear Lake Road will remain open, the park mentioned in an Instagram post. Fire managers hope that the park will receive some precipitation in the coming week, so the effects of the lingering smoke will be neutralized.