"The winter winds blow chilly and cold." It's a line from an old folk song, and it is so very true for the peaks of the Rocky Mountains. These mountains are the longest north-south barrier in the world. Along the Front Range, many peaks top out at 13,000 to 14,000+ feet, setting up a powerful wall to the prevailing westerly winds. In the winter months, these upper-air westerlies increase in intensity to almost twice as strong as they are in summer. They sweep above the western part of the continent and slam against the Rockies, often at around 11,000 feet and above. During the times when this irresistible force meets this immovable object, chaos is the natural result.
The winds that roar around the crags become unstable and unpredictable, with up drafts, down drafts, and cyclonic bursts. I confess I have never experienced this awesome phenomenon first hand. Trail Ridge Road, which reaches an elevation of 12,458 feet, is closed
in late October and doesn't reopen until sometime around Memorial Day when the plows can get the snow drifts cleared out. The closest I have ventured to mountain storms is to drive up to about 10,500 feet on a fairly good day and take a few photos like this one of Long's Peak.
While the weather wasn't bad where I was, it was definitely windy on top of Long's. This photo shows the Diamond, a sheer rock face where only
skilled technical climbers go.
What I do have to describe what it's like up there is first hand accounts from a man named Enos A. Mills, known as the Father of Rocky
Mountain National Park. He fought very hard for years to get the Park established and was successful in 1915. Before that, however, he was known by a different name to local people. Enos Mills was "the Snow Man." In 1902, Mills was appointed by the State Irrigation Department to be the State Snow Observer for Colorado. Between 1903 and 1906, he snowshoed the upper slopes of the mountains from the Wyoming border to the New Mexico border and back and forth across the Continental Divide. His purpose was to measure snow depths for predicting how much water would be available for the next summer's crops. He was insatiably curious and seemed to have little concern for his own comfort and safety. He would
hike over mountain tops for days with only the clothes on his back and a pocket full of raisins or peanuts to eat. He wrote many magazine articles and books about his adventures. In a book called The Spell of the Rockies (see the reference below), he tells a story about the wind on Long's Peak.
