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The Valley Finally Got Its Snow. Also, Meet the Women Who Built It
The Valley Finally Got Its Snow. Also, Meet the Women Who Built It
Two feet in May, the biggest storm since 2003, and the Mother's Day story Estes Park has never fully told.
Buck Timber
May 7, 2026
Two Feet of Snow, Mother's Day, and the Women Who Built This Valley The Mountain Thread | Estes Park Weekly Newsletter | May 7, 2026 |
BEFORE THE COFFEE GETS COLD Moe showed up at the door Wednesday morning with snow in his beard and a look on his face that could only be described as satisfied. He had been out in it. He said the valley was quieter than he had heard it in months. The kind of quiet that only happens when the snow is coming down fast enough to muffle everything and the whole town has decided to stay inside and let it.
Roughly two feet of heavy wet snow fell across Estes Park and the surrounding foothills over two days. Some spots measured even more. The biggest May storm this part of Colorado has seen since 2003. After the driest, most snowpack-deficient winter anyone around here could remember, the mountains finally got what they needed.
Mother's Day is Sunday. The valley just got a gift. This week we have two stories. One is about what that snow actually means for the summer ahead. The other is about the women who built this place, because Mother's Day in Estes Park deserves more than a card. SIT DOWN. THIS ONE'S GOOD. |
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The history of Estes Park gets told a certain way.
Joel Estes discovers the valley. Lord Dunraven tries to steal it. Enos Mills fights for the park. F.O. Stanley builds the hotel. The men are in the foreground. The names on the peaks and the roads and the hotels are mostly men's names. The story moves through them like water through a familiar channel.
But go back. Look at who was actually here. Look at who was doing the work that held things together, built things that lasted, saved things that would otherwise be gone.
The picture changes considerably.
Who Put Estes Park on the Map Before Anyone Else?
She arrived with a bad back and a doctor's note.
Isabella Bird, a British explorer in her forties, traveled alone in the American West in 1873 on the advice of her physician, who thought mountain air might help. She was not supposed to climb anything. She was supposed to rest.
She climbed Longs Peak.
Her guide was a one-eyed mountain man named Rocky Mountain Jim, who dragged her up the final pitch, as she wrote later, like a bale of goods, by sheer force of muscle. She went home to England. She wrote a book called A Lady's Life in the Rocky Mountains. It sold seven editions. Her readers became the conservation-minded public that Enos Mills later turned into park supporters.
She never came back. She never knew what she started.
In 1892, at age 60, she became the first female Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society. She spent the rest of her life going places she was not supposed to go.
Who Built the First Guest Ranch and Named a Waterfall?Read More... |
Trivia Question❓Esther Burnell and her sister Elizabeth became the first female certified nature guides in the National Park System in 1917. What did Esther do on Christmas morning 1916 that first caught the attention of Enos Mills and helped prove she was serious about mountain life? Answer at the bottom of the newsletter |
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All winter, the numbers were bad.
Historically low snowpack. Some measurements calling it the worst on record for the season. Water managers doing math they did not want to do. River guides staring at flow projections and not saying much out loud.
Then May showed up.
Roughly two feet of heavy wet snow fell across Estes Park and the surrounding foothills over two days. Some spots measured even more. The biggest May storm this part of Colorado has seen since 2003. After one of the weakest snow seasons in memory, the kind that makes old-timers go quiet when you ask about it, the mountains finally got something worth talking about.
One storm does not fix a whole winter. But this one changes the math.
The water.
May snow is different from January powder. Different in a way that matters.
January snow in Colorado is dry and light. A foot of it might contain an inch of actual water. You can pick it up with your hands and it weighs almost nothing. It is beautiful and it is mostly air.
May snow is not that.
May snow is heavy. Dense. Wet enough to snap branches and collapse carports and make you understand why the elk do not seem concerned about it. A foot of May snow contains considerably more water per inch than anything that fell in January. It will melt faster because the sun is higher and the days are longer. That part is true. But what it leaves behind in the watershed, what soaks into the ground and feeds the rivers and works its way through the system into June, matters more than the speed at which it disappears. Two feet of wet May snow is not the same as two feet of powder. Right now, that is a very good thing.
The wildflowers.
They were ahead of schedule. Read More... |
RMNP UPDATE
Roughly two feet of heavy wet snow fell across Estes Park and the surrounding foothills during the May 5-6 storm, with some spots measuring even more. The park is operating under post-storm conditions. Lower elevation roads and trails are accessible but conditions are changing fast as the snow melts. Check current conditions at nps.gov/romo before you go.
Trail Ridge Road remains closed. The storm added significant fresh snow to the upper road. No opening date has been announced. Plowing will begin when conditions allow. Call 970-586-1222 around the clock for current road status.
Timed entry reservations for May 22 through June 30 are still available on Recreation.gov. No reservation needed before May 22. Forty percent of reservations are released at 7 p.m. MDT the night before your desired entry date if you missed the initial release. |
DID YOU KNOW?Esther Burnell and her sister Elizabeth became the first female certified nature guides in the National Park System in 1917, one year before the National Park Service hired its first two women park rangers. Elizabeth repeatedly violated park rules prohibiting women from guiding above treeline without a male escort, routinely taking groups to the summit of Longs Peak anyway.
Alberta Falls in Rocky Mountain National Park was named for Alberta Sprague by her husband Abner as he mapped the area in the 1890s. Alberta and Abner were among the first settlers of Estes Park, building Sprague's Lodge in Moraine Park. Alberta served as president of the Estes Park Woman's Club in 1926-27. The falls named for her are one of the most visited destinations in the park today.
Muriel MacGregor spent her final years arranging for the MacGregor Ranch to be preserved as an educational resource. She left it to her friend Orpha Kendall, who fought a legal battle against MacGregor cousins with $2,500 and a summer deadline. The MacGregor Ranch Museum opened in 1973 and remains the last working cattle ranch in Estes Park today.
May snow in Colorado is denser and wetter than January powder, meaning every inch contains significantly more water. While it melts faster due to warmer temperatures and longer days, the high water content per inch means more goes into the ground and feeds the rivers. Two feet of wet May snow delivers considerably more water to the watershed than two feet of dry winter snow. |
Buck's Joke Of The Day |
Isabella Bird climbed Longs Peak on doctor's orders and wrote a bestseller. Alberta Sprague ran a lodge, built a community, and got a waterfall named after her. Esther Burnell snowshoed eight miles on Christmas morning for tomato soup and became the first female certified nature guide in the country. Flora Stanley donated 54 acres so the town could have a park. Muriel MacGregor left a ranch to a friend she had known for six years and dared anyone to argue about it. The history books mostly talk about the men. (The men built some fine hotels. The women built everything else.) |
💡 Answer to Trivia Question: Isabella Bird climbed Longs Peak on doctor's orders and wrote a bestseller. Alberta Sprague ran a lodge, built a community, and got a waterfall named after her. Esther Burnell snowshoed eight miles on Christmas morning for tomato soup and became the first female certified nature guide in the country. Flora Stanley donated 54 acres so the town could have a park. Muriel MacGregor left a ranch to a friend she had known for six years and dared anyone to argue about it. The history books mostly talk about the men. (The men built some fine hotels. The women built everything else.) |
UNTIL NEXT WEEK Moe came back Thursday afternoon after the snow had stopped and the sky had gone that particular shade of blue that only happens after a big storm clears out.
He said he had been thinking about Esther Burnell all day. A woman who quit her corporate job, moved to Estes Park, snowshoed eight miles on Christmas morning for a picnic in a blizzard, became the first female certified nature guide in the National Park System, married the man who created the park, raised their daughter alone after he died, ran his inn for twenty-four more years, fought his battles, published his books, and was remembered by someone who knew her as simply formidable.
I told him that was a pretty good Mother's Day story. He said it was a pretty good any-day story. He was right.
Happy Mother's Day. Stay warm out there. The valley got what it needed and the summer is going to be better for it. Stay smart, stay safe, and leave the mountains as fresh as you found them this week
- Buck Timber The Mountain Thread themountainthread.com/signup |
This account draws from National Park Service records, documented weather data, the MacGregor Ranch archives, the National Parks Conservation Association, and the living history of the Estes Valley. The broad facts are solid. Some scenes have been shaped for the telling. Think of it the way you would any good historical drama: based on true events, with a few gaps filled by a storyteller who has lived in this valley long enough to know how these things usually go. - Buck |
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