Photo by D. Sillman
(Click on the following link to listen to an audio version of this blog ….Lory State Park
Lory State Park is about 20 miles northwest of where I live in Greeley . There are, though, no straight roads connecting the two places. Close to the park the topography of the foothills takes over and sends roads arcing off on tangents away from straight lines. You have to go north to get west, and south to go east and so on.
Even more than the hills and valleys of foothills’ landscape, though, it is the incredible number of reservoirs and their associated wetlands that turns the 20 mile drive from here to Lory into an hour-long expedition (or, an hour and a half if you miss a couple of turns!). A great deal of the area between here and there is dedicated to holding onto water!
Horsetooth Reservoir. Photo by Bureau of Reclamation
Water, as I have said before, is the key to this area’s natural and human controlled ecologies. Barren, brown steppes erupt into green, riparian woodlands alongside streams of almost any size. Lush, productive agricultural fields are possible here because someone had the forethought to grab onto some of the spring snow melt water before it got to the Gulf of Mexico (via the Platte and the Missouri and the Mississippi) or the Gulf of California (via the Colorado). The five million people who live in the cities and towns of the Front Range rely on this captured water for drinking, sanitation, bathing and growing trees and grass to make their dry, desert-like cities more livable..
Reservoirs in North-Central Colorado. Google Maps
There are dozens of reservoirs near Fort Collins including ones high in the mountains that impound the freshly melted snow all across the Cache la Poudre Watershed, and even more at lower altitudes that hold the water transferred via canals and pipelines from the Big Thompson and the Colorado Rivers. There are also two large reservoirs just being completed (Glade and Galeton Reservoirs) that are part of the Northern Integrated Supply Project (NISP). The reservoirs range in size from the massive, six-mile long Horsetooth Reservoir to a diverse array of small, unnamed artificial lakes. The map to the left (from Google Maps) shows the remarkable number of blue areas (almost all human-made reservoirs) dotting the dry landscape here in the northern Front Range.
So, Lory State Park is surrounded by water but its appearance epitomizes the dry ecosystems of Northern Colorado. The park covers 2,591 acres. Its lower elevations are covered by open areas of dry grasslands that are dominated by big and little bluestem, prairie sandreed, blue and side-oats grama and a mix of other dryland grasses. Some of the more disturbed grass area (this entire park was a working ranch up until 1967) are covered with rabbit brush and sagebrush. The dry hillsides and the scattered gaps in the higher elevation forests are filled in with dense, shrublands dominated by mountain mahogany, serviceberry, bitterbrush, buckbrush and ninebark. Dry, bare rock outcrops are covered with lichens, and wet seeps and springs support mosses and a complex community of flowering plants.
Photo by M. Hamilton
The higher elevations in the park support a mixed forest dominated by conifers (ponderosa pine, Douglas fir and Rocky Mountain juniper) and small groves of aspens. Breaks in the tree cover, as mentioned above, are filled in with a mix of shrubs (especially common juniper) and grasses. The sizes and densities of the trees and shrubs reflect the amount of total yearly water delivery (especially by snow and snow melt) and also the effectiveness of that delivered precipitation (areas that are shaded or tucked down in ravines have greatly reduced evaporation and transpiration).
There are areas of the high elevation forests in Lory State Park where trees have been cut down. These cut-tree areas are part of a “fuel mitigation” project that began in 2003 with the aim to reduce the wildfire potential within the park. This project involves both selective thinning of trees and also prescribed burning to reduce the dry vegetation cover and also promote the growth of fire-dependent aspen groves.
Photo by D. Sillman
Out on the open grasslands are numerous rock outcroppings and sandstone hogbacks. A hogback is a long, ridge of erosion-resistant rock with a narrow crest atop two steep, and relatively equally slopes (or “faces”). It is formed by the unequal erosion, usually, of layers of sedimentary rocks.
The Lory Park website further describes the geology of the park as,
“Precambrian rocks like pegmatite, granodiorite, tonalite and metasedimentary rocks lie under the park and are exposed over the western two-thirds of the area. Pennsylvanian and Permian sedimentary formations rest on Precambrian granites, creating patterns along the Front Range’s east side. Stream erosion has formed steep canyons, draining mountain runoff. Sedimentary rocks like Satanka and Ingleside formations are visible along the reservoir shoreline, while Fountain Formation conglomerates and sandstones are found nearby. Metasedimentary rocks appear in parallel bands. Tonalite is exposed south of Mill Creek, as is a band of Boulder Creek granodiorite. Pegmatite is exposed on the south-central park boundary. Colluvial deposits can be seen below the Fountain Formation and along Soldier Creek.”
(I took this description as a straight quote because I am not geologically competent enough to put it into my own words!)
Photo by USFWS. Public Domain
The complexity of the vegetation, topography and geology of Lory State Park is supported by the nearby open water and wetlands of Horsetooth Reservoir and sustains a rich array of wildlife throughout the park. eBird reports 211 species of birds from Lory State Park. The eBird website provides both historical lists of bird identified and also lists of birds seen in the current year and in the current month. The lists include 15 species of eagles, hawks and falcons, 4 species of owls, many grassland species (including the western meadowlark, the horned lark and the lark bunting (the state bird of Colorado!)), 8 species of corvids, 5 species of thrushes (including mountain bluebirds, western bluebirds and eastern bluebirds) and 10 species of waterfowl and shorebirds that have drifted over from Horsetooth Reservoir.
Mule deer. Photo by USFWS. Public Domain
The Lory State Park website sponsored by iNaturalistAU lists 1068 plant and animal species in the park. There are beautiful photographs of most of these species out on this website! While we were in the park we saw a group of five white-tailed deer running up a steep slope up over the Arthur’s Rock hiking trail. There are also, according to iNaturalist mule deer and wapiti (“elk”) in the park. Other park mammals of note include racoons, black bear, bobcats, long-tailed weasels, mountain lions, three kinds of cottontail rabbits, ground squirrels, red foxes and badgers.
Deborah and I in our car and Marian, Lee, Ari and Zofia in their car drove directly to Arthur’s Rock upon entering the north end park. In order to get to this popular site, we had to drive the entire length of the park mostly on a narrow, bumpy, dirt roads. Not the kind of road that a Camry Hybrid was made for! It was a weekday morning but still the parking area for the Arthur’s Rock Trail was nearly full. On weekends, it must be very difficult to find a parking space here! Arthur’s Rock is a large, granite outcrop that commands an incredible view of the surrounding park and Horsetooth Reservoir.
Photo by D. Sillman
The trail started up through an old gully that was littered with large to medium sized rocks. Walking was difficult and required constant attention to the footpath. We stopped every once and a while so that we could take in the scenery. There was a lot of “up” in this trail and frequent switchbacks to spread the “up” out! Ari especially liked the glitter of the mica flecks in many of the rocks and ran back and forth between the rest of us to point them out.
A few weeks before, Deborah and Marian (and her dog Gedi) had come out to Arthur’s Rock to climb the trail. When they got up to the ponderosa pines they were swarmed by flocks of nuthatches. The pine cones must have been ripe and ready, and the birds were feasting! They noted that most of the birds were
White-breasted nuthatch. Photo by Rhododendrites, Wikimedia Commons
white-breasted nuthatches but some may have been pygmy nuthatches in the flock, too.
They did not see any red-breasted nuthatches, though, in their ponderosa pine bird flocks. The red-breasteds had, apparently, gone to lower elevations or maybe to more southern parts of the state in anticipation of winter. At my house in Greeley, red-breasted nuthatches have been in my backyard all year round. They are constant visitors to my sunflower seed feeder and are so bold and tame that they fly in to eat from the feeder even while I am filling it! I wonder if their apparently high tolerance levels toward people are facilitating a change in the species to move away from the ponderosa pine forests down into the more stable and protected suburban and birdfeeder-rich habitats? It would be interesting to do some nuthatch counts up in the pine forests in the summer to see if the red-breasted nuthatches are there in good numbers. Possibly they are just adapting to use human provided feeder resources to make it through the winter?
Although the trail was only 1.7 miles long, there was a gain of almost 1100 feet to get to the top of Arthur’s Rock. Sections of the trail were a real scramble up and over the rocks and boulders. None of us got to the top of the trail this time, though. Sore knees and tired children who wanted to be carried slowed down our progress. Next time, though, we will get all the way up!
Photo by M. Hamilton
Back in the parking lot, Ari and Zofia sat in the open trunk of our Camry and ate peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, crackers, raisins and M and M’s. They both agreed that hiking was a great deal of fun, especially when there were M and M’s to be had!