Wolf Creek Pass

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Billowing, gray clouds hung above us for more than three hours as we drove south and east into Colorado on Saturday. But beneath these low overcast skies the aspen groves glowed. Then, as we drove into Durango, Colorado, the sun came out and the quaking aspens sparkled. As we entered the Weminuche Wilderness, the golden aspens were a beautiful contrast to the dark green conifers, creating a magnificent tapestry on the mountainsides. As we climbed to and over the Wolf Creek Pass (10,856 ft.) we were stunned to pass mile after mile of gray Engelmann spruce. Heavy clouds scraping the mountain tops left signatures of rime ice and a shroud of misty clouds draping the highest trees of this sad sight.

"Drive over Wolf Creek Pass, and you’ll notice a grim reality: most of the mountain’s centuries-old spruce trees are dead and gone. To a casual onlooker, the trees appear to have died within the span of a single year, though in reality their demise has been brewing for nearly a decade. The culprit: spruce beetles, the latest in a succession of barkbeetle attacks that got their local start with the extremely dry years of 2002 through 2004." (Four Corners Free Press December 2011 by Anne Minard)

Colorado and U.S. foresters, interviewed for the April 26, 2012 Durango Herald, reported that spruce trees are under stress from the drought, making them an easy target for spruce beetles, which have devastated 250,000 acres in the Rio Grande and San Juan national forests. These are the forests we drove through between Moab and southern Colorado.

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