On Thursday, Sept. 26th, we drove 10 miles up a very bumpy gravel road, over an earthen dam that forms Granby Lake, to Monarch Lake near Granby, CO. This is situated in a remote Federal Recreation Area in the Arapaho National Forest, called the "Indian Peaks Wilderness Area". There we found a large gravel parking lot with several other SUV's parked and other people getting their gear ready to go hiking.
There were over 50 miles of hiking trails to choose from and we decided to stick with the trail around Monarch Lake.
We were about six miles into the hike when we came across a couple who were excited about just having seen a moose family cavorting around on a sand bar at the edge of the lake. We decided to stay there and see if the moose family came back out of the willow trees and brush on the sand bar so we could view them and maybe take some pictures. We could hear them grunting, so we knew they were there.
Moose are either solitary animals or they stay in small family groups. A male moose (bull) will usually stay with one female (cow) and her baby (calf), unlike the Elk who usually have multiple female mates.
Well, we weren't disappointed and had a great adventure when the moose family came out of the bushes about twenty minutes later. First the mother and baby came out from the bushes. Notice how big the calf is, nearly as big as the cow.
They noticed us on the shore but kept on munching on water plants, and didn't seem to be intimidated by our presence.
Mom and Dad were excitedly snapping pictures and some other people stopped to look and exclaim loudly at the sighting, which made me excited and I began to bark. Then the bull moose came out of the bushes too and he was headed right for us.
Some park rangers came along just then, while Dad was trying to calm me down. The rangers told Dad to take me down the trail away from the moose family because the bull moose would attack us if I kept barking. Apparently, moose don't like dogs and they will attack if they feel threatened.
This guy was about six feet at the shoulder and between 1600 and 2000 pounds, so we didn't want to provoke him anymore. It was great fun watching them for a while, but then they came close to the shore where the trail was and we couldn't go by them.
Another very experienced hiker came along and told us she was warier of moose than of elk or bears because they were more unpredictable. She told us that moose, although they look big and gangly, can accelerate up to 40 miles an hour when they attack, which is many times faster than any human being can run.
We all waited for about half an hour until the moose family moved a little further from the trail and then one by one we tried walking past them. They were about twenty feet away from us, so Mom picked me up and Dad rubbed my ears and talked to me to distract me from barking as we passed by.
It was a great adventure with a very nice hiking trail, and the moose encounter was both thrilling and scary at the same time.
Tomorrow we will try to see more Elk and Moose in Rocky Mountain National Park😊.
No comments:
Post a Comment