(Rudy) This time on "NatureScene," we visit Rocky Mountain National Park in the Front Range of the Rockies.

We have a wonderful glacial story, look at old rocks, and see changes in plants and animals as we go up in elevation.

"NatureScene" is made possible in part by a grant from Santee Cooper committed to protecting and enhancing the environment by introducing GreenPower: Electricity produced from renewable sources and by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting and by viewers like you, members of the ETV Endowment of South Carolina.

♪ Hello and welcome to "NatureScene" at Rocky Mountain National Park in north-central Colorado near Estes Park.

I'm Jim Welch with naturalist Rudy Mancke, and we're beginning our visit to this 267,000-acre park on the east side of the park.

Moraine Park is the name for this place, and it's an interesting place, very exciting.

The name, if you know a little about geology, tells you that this is going to be a geological story, at least in part.

Moraines, leftovers by glaciers -- we're going to be talking about glacial activity and how they sculpted the rock that was already forced up to form mountains.

We're going to be talking, too, about very old rock and very young mountains.

It will be a good geological story.

We'll also see how plant communities change from relatively low, around 8,000 feet or so, all the way up to 12,000 feet.

(Jim) We can feel and see it all behind us in the background.

(Rudy) The Front Range of the Rockies, that's usually the name applied to this part of the southern Rockies, and what we're looking at there is the western Continental Divide off in the distance.

Water falling on the far side would go to the Pacific.

Water falling on this side would end up in the Gulf of Mexico.

Mountains uplifted.

Faulting here is amazing, very intricate faulting.

Sixty-five million years ago or so the uplift began.

Nature began to wear down the mountains, slowly but surely, even as they came up.

(Jim) A stream running through this valley.

Many times we think of valleys caused by streams.

(Rudy) Usually when a stream causes a valley, you've got a pretty deeply-cut V-shaped valley.

Really we get a feeling here as it expands out as a U-shaped valley.

The little, teeny stream didn't do all this work.

It was the work of frozen water, not liquid water.

Glaciers came down.

You can almost visualize the ice right up in here, coming on down and moving out.

This is called Moraine Park, because look on the left side.

That sharp-edged pile of rock over there is a lateral moraine.

There's also one on the right here that you can see very clearly covered with vegetation.

Signs that glaciers were moving right down and eventually, about 12,000 years ago or so, retreating.

(Jim) You said very old rock.

(Rudy) Over a billion years old.

The rock we're going to be looking at, the granites especially, and some of the gneisses, are going to be over a billion years old.

Speaking of rocks, mass of granite here.

We'll talk about that in a minute.

Look at the snake sunning.

(Jim) Where did he come from?

(Rudy) I don't know, but he looks like he's getting ready to shed.

I don't see the markings very clearly on that.

It's one of the garter snakes.

The western terrestrial garter snake is the specific name.

Tongue flickering out a little bit.

Not a very distinct stripe down the middle of the back but you get a feeling for stripes down the side.

One of those non-venomous snakes.

I bet it's about to shed and probably will find a crevice in the rocks to shed and then spend the winter probably hibernating in this same general area.

That is a perfect snake for this place, because we're looking at two communities kind of rolled into one here.

One is the riparian community.

You already talked about the Thompson River drainage that comes through here, and you can see water flowing here on the side.

That garter snake would love to get fish or frogs or tadpoles that might be associated with that water.

(Jim) What are some of the shrubs and bushes along the creek?

(Rudy) Two of them seem to dominate here.

One of them, the willows, and you expect willows.

They're dominant in this part of the world and all over North America.

One of the willows there.

Then right next to it, one of the birches, sometimes called river birch because it's usually associated with rivers.

Western birch is another name for it.

You can see those little cone-like aments, they're called, that are the modified female flowers, now formed fruit on it, and typical birch leaves.

Then the other area here would be called meadows, or shrub lands, and you see shrubby cinquefoil out there.

Very interesting little leaf on it, yellow flowers that pop out all over the place.

You see clumps here and there, and that's a typical species right in here.

(Jim) I see a coyote!

Then -- yes, you saw it too.

Coyote out there.

Look at the tail just wiggling!

Wagging his tail, jumping up and down, looking for something in the grasses.

These meadows are lush.

They've got lots of moisture.

The grasses are there and probably one of the small mammals.

Look at the way he works like a dog would work.

Same genus.

You see the red behind the ears and dark on the end of that tail.

Just bouncing around and moving away from us.

The other animal you associate with it -- look at the elk, with the strange rubbing that he's doing on those pines.

We're going to be heading into the pine forest, the montane forest, in a minute.

You see the way he's rubbing, tearing things up.

(Jim) This would be the time of year they're coming out of the velvet?

(Rudy) Absolutely, yeah.

It's time that they'll begin to come down from higher elevations and find females, the cows, sometimes with the calves still with them, last year's young.

(Jim) He's got a damaged antler.

It's malformed.

(Rudy) Oh, yeah, that's strange.

Coyote walking away, looking back at us.

Isn't that a neat view?

Listen -- look at the elk coming towards us bugling.

[ elk bugling ] (Rudy) That bugling signals that he's ready to get a group together.

Oh, man, that's interesting!

Coming right at us!

But you see how open this meadow is compared to the pinelands that are in the distance.

Two of the animals you would expect to see right here in the park.

Yeah, see the cow and calf right off in the open there.

The male approaching.

See him?

The bull kind of walking toward them there.

The elk, dark on the front, you can see it clearly, then that lighter rump patch on the back.

Big rack on one side, not so much on the other.

♪ (Jim) This is our nation's tenth-oldest national park, established in 1915, and has about three million visitors a year.

(Rudy) Yeah.

It's interesting walking on this moraine now.

All this debris that we're walking on was shoved to the side by a glacier that was last active here about 12,000 years ago or so.

You see the big boulders piled up.

There are boulders all around here.

(Jim) Lets us know the power of glacial movement.

(Rudy) Oh, yeah!

Ice is amazing when it slowly slides down a mountain, and that's what a glacier is.

Then once the ice melts and the glacier retreats -- look at the size of that boulder right there!

Usually you refer to that as a glacial erratic, when it's a big hunk of rock that's all alone by itself, sticking out, literally, like a sore thumb.

(Jim) Dropped here on thee among one of the mon trees here in the W. (Rudy) Ponderosa pines dominate here.

That's the dominant tree, the tall one.

Usually needles in bundles of two or three.

Widespread in the Western United States.

This is part of the montane forest that you expect to see at this elevation.

Those are the trees that dominate.

A couple of shrubs in front of us here.

One of them, the one with the smaller leaves on it, darker green, bitterbrush is one of the common names for it.

Antelope bitterbrush is another name.

A lot of animals browse on it.

Interesting little leaves with three projections on the end.

(Jim) That's the darker g. What about the lighter green?

(Rudy) The lighter green is one of the gooseberries, or currants, genus name Ri bes.

Quite common here, a good number of varieties.

That one has a little bit of red fruit on it.

(Jim) Look!

(Rudy) I see it too.

(Jim) Two deer.

Two mule deer?

(Rudy) Mule deer, bucks.

Antlers still in velvet, aren't they?

(Jim) Yeah.

This time of y, late August, I guess it's about time.

In September, t getting rid of.

(Rudy) Yep, and they are browsing.

You see they're not getting grasses down low.

They are feeding on shrubs there.

Oh, that's nice.

Still in velvet, soon to lose that skin and begin pushing and shoving.

They won't be two males that close together without pushing and shoving pretty soon.

The rut is soon on.

(Jim) Bird activity .

(Rudy) Birds everywhere.

[ crow calling ] Listen to the call for a second.

The American crow calling there, calling, calling, calling.

That's nice.

You can see him in the tree on the branch.

The dark color, even the beak is dark.

Hard even to see his eye.

That's a member of the corvidae, the crow and their relative family, widespread.

(Jim) I see a magpie.

That's a very common bird he.

(Rudy) Yeah, they're all over the place here.

Big bird too.

Brightly colored, really dark and bright white, little bit of metallic green on it.

The black-billed magpie is the specific name for that one.

I guess he's scavenging, so he's sitting on the top of that old stump, figuring he's going to find something in there to eat.

That's a nice bird, a long tail too.

Both of those are scavengers, as are all the members of the crow family, scavenging for a meal.

(Jim) With a dark bl.

(Rudy) Look at this.

(Jim) In the jay fam?

(Rudy) Yeah, crow-jay family, Steller's jay.

All three of those in the same family.

All are scavengers.

Blue on the back, and then it's darker toward the front, and the crest very obvious.

The only jay with a crest in the West.

That's the way to remember that one.

You see him hopping around on the ground.

That's one way to find food.

Look at the sapsucker going up the tree.

He'll peck into the side.

Close relative of the yellow-bellied sapsucker in the East.

Red-naped sapsucker is the common name for that.

Little red on the head and throat.

There's an extra little dot of red in the nape of the neck, and that gives it the common name.

They don't even seem to mind the fact we're right by a road here, so we'll hear a little bit of traffic.

They don't care; they're well adjusted.

(Jim) Looking acrossd to these elk, they don't seem to mind visitors.

Very used to the visitors in the park.

(Rudy) Right by the road here.

Mostly males over there.

A couple of females, it looks like, but you see the small antlers on that thing.

Being frustrated by a little insect activity, you can see the ears going.

I don't see the insects, but I'm sure there's something around it.

Short antlers on there lets you know it's a young male.

Blacker, or more dark brown rather, in the front and then lighter as you go to the back of that animal.

They don't seem to mind the people or the sounds.

♪ [ water roaring ] (Jim) Slowly working our way up in elevation, beginning at 8,000 and getting closer to 9 along Roaring River.

Rudy, the name is well deserved because we can sure hear the roar.

(Rudy) It's a nice so.

[ water roaring ] (Rudy) Water slowly by rearranging the world.

You can see itt cascading over.

Takes a littlee to make a diffe with a stream t does get up at.

(Jim) A dam broke in 1982.

That sent 29 million gallons of water 4 miles above us rushing right through this area.

That changed things in a hurry.

(Rudy) It exploded the rock that was already piled up here and scattered it down, creating what's usually called an alluvial fan.

That's the term for it, and basically it just spreads things out in front of us.

You can see the rounded rocks.

The river did a little bit of the rounding, but a lot of this had been piled up earlier by glaciers.

The flood just took all of this and spread it out, creating... (Jim) I know it was Horseshoe Park before, and still is, but changed.

(Rudy) Yeah, and creating a little lake down there that didn't exist before July of 1982.

Damming up the Fall River and finally the river worked its way around.

So sometimes nature is slow and steady, and sometimes nature is very, very explosive.

Changed the world right here.

Interesting little forest at this level -- some trees we haven't looked at closely -- dominated here by Douglas fir, widespread conifer in the Western United States.

Rough fissures on the bark, you can see that makes it easily identifiable from a distance.

(Jim) Quaking aspen is very quick to identify as well.

(Rudy) Light-colored bark on it.

Leaves always shaking just a little bit in the wind.

One of the poplars, Populus tremuloides because of that trembling.

Usually the bark is pretty smooth, but anything can damage it, and I bet elk did a lot of the damage there.

When they scrape off the bark -- and elk feed on bark often, as well as leaves and branches -- they leave those scars.

Another tree over there, not quite so large, one of the maples.

Look at the maple-shaped leaves, and they're coming off opposite on the branch.

Rocky Mountain maple is the common name for that, and it's got fruit on it.

I'm sure lots of animals take advantage of opportunities.

(Jim) Rudy, look on the thistle over here.

It's look like a little woodpecker.

(Rudy) That is a woodpecker.

Downy woodpecker pecking.

Usually when you think woodpecker, you think of pecking on trees or getting insects from under bark, but it's taking thistle seed out of the head of that musk thistle.

That's not a native thistle, but the native bird is taking full advantage of it.

Throwing away the down and then taking the seed and changing them into downy woodpecker.

♪ (Jim) We're around 10,000 feet now, using the Old Fall River Road built in 1920 to get up this high.

(Rudy) This is a good subalpine zone below the alpine area.

This is the spruce-fir forest.

Engelmann spruce would be here.

I don't see it close, but subalpine fir all around us.

These are relatively small trees, but the shape of them is kind of interesting.

(Jim) Spire-like.

(Rudy) Yeah, A lot of them are spire-like.

and it has fruit on the top.

The fir cones, and it is a conifer, stick straight up.

The spruce cones would be aiming down.

You can see what's left of the cone.

All of the scales are gone, but that little spine in the middle identifies that pretty quickly.

Then the other conifer here, limber pine.

Five needles a bundle.

I don't see any big cones on that, but that's a typical species of this area.

It's interesting the way the pine is basically cracking the rock.

There is physical weathering going on in the old rock by the root of the limber pine tree.

Matter of fact, there's more root than there is trunk.

We talked about granite rock.

Look at all the banding in some of these rocks.

(Jim) What is that rock?

(Rudy) Metamorphic rock that was squeezed and fractured a long time ago.

You can see the lines of biotite mica in it and also quartzy material too, but you can see metamorphic rock as well as igneous rock here.

The other thing that's neat -- listen to this and look at it eating the cone.

Look at the little red squirrel right there, just taking the cone, looks like a lodgepole pinecone, and just rolling it like an ear of corn.

Stripping away the scales, getting the seed out, and making a squirrel out of what was going to be a lodgepole pine tree.

(Jim) Perfect habitat for it.

(Rudy) Look across the way too.

We're getting close to timberline.

You see the way the trees are going up only so far and then the avalanche slope there.

The world is constantly changing.

♪ (Jim) We're very close to one of the ovs for Trail Ridge , which is the higt continuous pavedd in the United States.

(Rudy) Yeah, we're going to hear a lot of people sounds.

There are lots of folks who are admiring what they see here.

They don't think about it, but they have an effect on animal life a lot, especially like the least chipmunk there, nibbling on something.

I don't know whether it's wild material or material that he got at the top.

See the little paws working there.

(Jim) You're not suppod to feed the animals.

(Rudy) No, not at all.

Stripes on the face, as well as the body.

Then the other one that's clearly eating something it didn't find in the woods, looks like a Cheeto, looks like a chipmunk, but it's not.

It's a golden-mantled ground squirrel.

You see the golden mantle on the shoulders.

No stripes on the face which lets us know it's not a chipmunk.

(Jim) A little larger than the least chipmunk.

(Rudy) Yeah.

Both of them rodents.

Then the bird that often comes to stops like this, Clark's nutcracker, common name for it.

A very opportunistic bird.

Usually feeding on seed that it gets from spruces and firs and things.

(Jim) Very strong bill.

(Rudy) Yeah.

Really a pretty loud bird, and when you hear it call, it's going to remind you of crows and jays.

That is in the crow and jay family too.

There is a group of them down there on the rock.

Couple of plants that come in here too.

One is really hidden behind the rocks.

We're getting up toward alpine zone.

Ground juniper is the common name for this one.

It is one of the junipers, genus Juniperus.

Pretty widespread in higher elevations.

Then the other plant that comes in is one -- it's a member of the Hydrangea family.

You don't find it in very many places, but here it is.

Waxflower is one of the common names for it.

I've never seen that before, but Jamesia is the scientific name, named after a botanist who came out here when this park was explored first off.

(Jim) You find it the mountains?

(Rudy) Yeah, this is about the right place for it, down in the shrub zone a little bit.

We've got to take another good look off.

That is really spectacular.

(Jim) Is that Fall River down below us in the valley?

(Rudy) Fall River that is meandering around.

You see the way it meanders, especially toward the end down there.

It pinches off little pis of itself every now and n to form oxbow lakes that are horseshoe-shaped, so Horseshoe Park is the term for that area.

Park being an area where you don't have woods.

See, it's wide open.

Then you remember, we were talking about it, the alluvial fan, all of that flow.

This is really nice because you can see where the road came across and how it blocked the river, forming that little lake there.

That was recent.

The old moraine is right down there in front of u.

Look at it.

Sharp edge now with trees on it.

That is a wonderful, wonderful view.

♪ (Jim) Even though we're just a few mis from where we startd at Moraine Park, it's like a journey 2400 miles north ino the arctic tundra.

(Rudy) This is a different world, the alpine zone.

In the Rockies here, at least 11,500 feet.

You've got to go that high to get above the trees.

Tundra is a Russian word that means land of no trees.

Look at the plants that dominate here.

They're all low-growing.

Flowering plants, mainly.

Any of the flowering plants that are here that have relatives elsewhere, these are dwarfed versions of the plants, so to speak.

Many species seem to dominate here that you don't find anywhere else.

Alpine zone is pretty stressful for lots of plants and animals.

(Jim) The Continental Divide goes along the ridge line, the mountain line that we see.

Many peaks over 11,000, but the big one, Longs Peak, 14,255 feet above sea level.

That was named after the explorer Long.

(Rudy) Yeah.

He was the one that lead the expedition that the botanist was on that we talked about, James, a little bit earlier.

Now let's get over here and get a close look at the rocks, because this is a wonderful geological story.

We've already talked about it a little bit.

Old rocks, relatively young mountains, so to speak.

Igneous and metamork that formed a long o and then were uplifted.

Rivers began to cuth them, as you might , forming V-shaped valleys.

Then about two milln years ago or so, the Ice Age times began, and look at all the scooped-out areas over there in front of us.

That's where the hed of a glacier was.

That's where the ics forming very thickl.

It's called a cirqu, c-i-r-q-u-e.

It's scooped out lit because, as the ice, it clings to the rock.

Then when the ice bo move, as glacial ic, it actually plucks the rock, takes the rock off, and creates those bowl-shaped structu.

There was a big glacier going down in the valley below us, and then there were smaller ones tucked up on the sides.

So there's a cirque there and a cirque right there.

I'm sure there are more as we go around.

(Jim) Such a harsh environment.

It would seem impossible for plants or animals to live up here.

(Rudy) Yeah, and yet they make adjustments.

It's interesting.

The zones that you've talked about are exciting, to see the way plant communities change when you've got rock sticking out like this and the sun finally hits them and warms them up.

Yellow-bellied marmot coming out.

Look at that.

That's a big one.

(Jim) It's like a woodchuck.

(Rudy) One of the woodchucks.

It's the woodchuck in the West, and they do a good bit of hibernating here, as you might imagine.

That one looks awfully fat, so he's taking the plants he finds and changing them into fat, storing it so he can hibernate and get through a very, very cold winter.

Then right here close -- look at the young one!

(Jim) Yeah!

See the head sticking up?

That's neat.

Just looking at us.

With a little bit of the underside, yellowish on it, yellow-bellied marmot.

That's a pretty large rodent.

♪ (Jim) There's 415 square s of scenic beauty.

It's no wonder thaty visitors love to co. (Rudy) You can get access to pretty high elevations here.

We're almost to 12,000 feet, so you see the way the plant communities change.

You get spectacular views on every hand.

That's so nice at the upper end of a glacial cirque, and a little bit of ice field left over there, snow fields.

(Jim) At this elevation, it's probably there year-round.

(Rudy) Yeah, and the cold wind that's blowing is probably going to bring snow in here pretty soon.

You can imagine in the past, snow building up in here, forming glacial ice and sliding down that valley.

(Jim) The krummholz all around us right here.

(Rudy) Yeah.

We've talked about tundra, alpine, and we've talked about subalpine.

This is kind of the buffer between the two, or the dividing line.

Crooked wood is what kr ummholz means in German.

They're the same trees we saw in the subalpine zone, but they're crooked.

Wind and cold air, heavy snowfall make all the difference in the world.

(Jim) Small pond over here.

We see those around the park.

(Rudy) That's nice.

Isn't that beautiful, placid water?

Nice little meadow around it.

You figure almost all the lakes here were formed, in one way or another, by the action of glaciers.

A nice U-shaped valley there with the trees on it.

You can see tree lines so clearly.

That's gorgeous.

Then you turn around.

Boom, isn't that spectacular!

There is a sharp-edged glacial cirque.

Ice there, building up, getting heavy, moving down, slowly but surely grinding the rock.

That's the Fall River cirque there.

Spectacular views in every direction.

♪ What a wonderful visit this has been.

We've had a chance to see big things and small things, sample a variety of habitats, see lots of plants and animals.

I like the mix, and it's so accessible to the public.

Rocky Mountain National Park in north-central Colorado near Estes Park.

Thanks for watching and join us again on the next "NatureScene."

♪ A production of... "NatureScene" is made possible in part by a grant from Santee Cooper committed to protecting and enhancing the environment by introducing GreenPower: Electricity produced from renewable sources and by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting and by viewers like you, members of the ETV Endowment of South Carolina.