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Rocky Mountain guy

6 min read
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Ellen and Jim Flanigan spend their summers at Rocky Mountain National Park. The couple stay in their RV while Jim volunteers his time at the park.

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Sunrise on Longs Peak, the only “Fourteener,” a peak higher than 14,000 feet, in Rocky Mountain National Park.

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Jim Flanigan’s “office” for the past few years, Bear Lake is probably the most visited location in Rocky Mountain National Park.

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Drought conditions during the past decade have caused a dramatic increase in the pine bark beetle population. The resulting dead trees create a hazard for hikers and campers, and raise the risk of wildfires.

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Volunteer Jim Flanigan says one of the greatest gifts of working in the park is observing wildlife at times when the animals are not disturbed by visitors. Early morning and late afternoon are the best times for getting great photos, and avoiding crowds.

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A mother owl and her little one

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The sheep population in Rocky Mountain National Park lives on the wind-swept tundra, finding adequate food in the sparse vegetation. Their teeth continue to grow, suiting them for the lifestyle of grazing among rocks. They also find needed minerals in the dirt.

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The Loch is one of the more popular destinations in the Bear Lake area. At a shade over 10,000 feet in elevation, the lake affords beautiful views early in the morning before winds disturb the water.

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One of Jim Flanigan’s duties is to travel Ridge Road, the highest continuous road in the “lower 48” states, stop at overlooks and answer visitors’ questions.

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Up close and personal with a bighorn sheep

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The ptarmigan is one of the most elusive animals in the park because it lives in tundra areas, and its feathers change with the seasons. Its snow-white plumage in winter makes it difficult to detect, while its summer outfit makes it possible for a visitor to get a scare when the bird takes flight from nearly underfoot.

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Eleven miles of Trail Ridge Road are above 11,000 feet. The road connects Estes Park and Grand Lake, but it is closed from some point in the fall until the opening near Memorial Day.

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A bull elk bugling in Rocky Mountain National Park

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These guys can be seen on a daily basis sparring for a right to court the females.

Visitors to Rocky Mountain National Park can count on one thing this summer: Jim Flanigan will help them get around.

Flanigan, a retired English teacher who lives in Claysville, has volunteered at the park during the summer months for 32 years.

A member of the Trail Masters, Flanigan is one of about 75 volunteers who work at Bear Lake Trailhead, the busiest spot in the park.

Flanigan educates and instructs visitors about resource protection and park regulations, helps keep traffic moving, assists visitors with finding a suitable trail for hiking, and answers questions.

“It’s been a rewarding experience. When I first started doing this, it was ‘Wow! This is a chance to give back, a chance to serve, and that’s good,'” said Flanigan. “But to do it well is important, so I do a lot of reading and researching, and I read all of the sources they provide the paid staff. It’s been a thing where you keep learning.”

Flanigan, 73, became a volunteer quite by accident. On a visit to the park with his wife, Ellen, in 1982, he overheard staff members fretting about a visitor information guide that was ready to go to print, but a center spread contained graphic mistakes that nobody knew how to fix.

“The guy who had done it had gone on vacation. I told them, ‘I can do that,'” recalled Flanigan. “They said, ‘What?’ I said I’d dabbled with it for years. I fixed the publication and that was it. They started asking, ‘Jim, can you do this. Jim, can you do that?'”

Each year, an estimated 1,500 volunteers contribute 100,000 hours of service to Rocky Mountain National Park, and their work is valued at $2 million.

Throughout the country, more than 246,000 people donate their time and skills each year to the National Park Service.

Flanigan will surpass 3,600 volunteer hours this summer.

Without those volunteers, said Jim Hein, lead park ranger at Rocky Mountain National Park, many visitor programs might not be possible.

Hein said Flanigan, engaging, outgoing and knowledgeable, is one of the park’s top volunteers.

Wearing his trademark safari hat (a ball cap comes with the volunteer uniform, but Flanigan said it’s not a practical choice in the Colorado sunshine), he’s worked a variety of details over the decades.

As a member of the Elk Bugle Corps, he kept visitors from approaching the elk and provided information to people observing them.

He also spent time on the Bighorn Brigade at Sheep Lakes, where volunteers stop traffic all day every day during lambing season so that the sheep, who usually get to the lakes by descending a steep mountain and crossing a busy road, can make it across safely.

A former volunteer firefighter, Flanigan once was the first person at the scene of a motor home fire in which a woman was severely burned.

Flanigan said he’s “seen just about everything,” and recounted the time a woman panicked after driving up a steep hill in the park (an 11-mile segment on Trail Ridge Road is above 11,000 feet) and said she couldn’t drive any farther. He turned her car around and drove her down the mountain.

Every year on his birthday, Flanigan takes birthday cake to Bear Lake and shares it with fellow volunteers, rangers, bus drivers and visitors.

“It’s just been a pleasure to have Jim on board,” said Hein. “It’s been one of his major loves to work with the folks at Bear Lake. There are several trails that take off into the park at Bear Lake, and working there demands a lot of personal attention by our volunteers. He’s dedicated, and he’s great with visitors.”

Flanigan and Ellen, along with their two Dachshunds, live in a camper outside of RMNP during their stay.

They sing in a church choir in Estes, Colo., and hike many of the park trails.

“We don’t hike nearly as much as we used to, but there are 364 miles of trail in that park, and we have done the vast majority of them,” said Flanigan, who has been slowed by atrial fibrillation. “We have been on the top of the second highest mountain in the park, Mount Ipsalon, which is at 13,514 feet.”

On Saturdays, Flanigan makes pancakes for the campers at the campground. A member of the Masons, he belongs to a lodge at home and one in Colorado.

And, said Ellen with a laugh, Flanigan might be the only man in America who packs a white Mark Twain suit to travel to a national park.

Flanigan, who used to rent costumes from a local costume store to “make things alive for kids” in his McGuffey High School classroom, was inspired to perform Twain after watching Hal Holbrook depict the American author and humorist at Waynesburg University.

A friend of the owner of the costume store makes costumes for Broadway, so she sewed Flanigan a white suit.

He performs dramatic recitations from Twain’s works at events around the park and throughout Southwestern Pennsylvania.

Flanigan said RMNP is one of the most beautiful places in the United States, but he is troubled by the threat climate change poses to the park.

Mountaintop tundra areas are warming up earlier in the spring, which is linked to a 50 percent decline in white-tailed ptarmigan that live on the tundra year-round.

The park also is losing its lodgepole pines to the mountain pine beetle. Longer, hotter summers have extended the beetle’s reproductive and growth periods, while fewer cold snaps and higher winter temperatures have permitted more bark beetles to survive in the winter, spring and fall.

“There’s a glacier in the park that was twice its size when I started going out there,” said Flanigan. “Now, you see a remnant of that glacier. And on the tundra, there are plants growing up there that used to be considered sub-alpine. Now they’re growing up top. There’s one campground that used to be absolutely gorgeous and very shady because of all the trees that were there. We had to clear cut it because of all the dead trees. It’s bare. If you’re a talking head who sits in your news studio in New York City, you don’t see this stuff. We can’t ignore it.”

Maybe Flanigan’s Twain said it best: “Nature knows no indecencies. Man invents them.”

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