Travel on trails to protect Ponderosa pine roots

This article was adapted from a Friends of Ute Valley Park Instagram post shared on April 13, 2026.

If you’ve visited the park over the last few weeks, you may be noticing hints of vanilla or butterscotch among the stands of Ponderosa. As the spring sun warms the bark of our Ponderosa pines, the tree’s terpenes and sap thin out, gifting Ute Valley Park with that iconic scent.

Spring is also typically when these trees would be drinking deeply from the melting snowpack. But due to the 2025-2026 winter season producing Colorado’s worst snowpack in 40+ years, Ute Valley Park’s Ponderosa pines are in survival mode.

This year’s photosynthesis will not be directed toward new needles or height. Instead, the trees will be investing their energy below ground, relying especially on lateral and fine feeder root systems just inches under the soil surface to seek out pulse moisture from precipitation events before it evaporates in our high-altitude sun.

Unlike the above-ground bark, these water-seeking roots are thin, translucent, and incredibly fragile. They depend on porous, aerated soil, which provides the oxygen they need to absorb surface water. They are also shielded by a biological soil crust, or biocrust, knit together by organisms like mosses, fungi, and lichens that support the stability, health, and fertility of the park as a whole.

Being good stewards of Ute Valley Park often involves protecting the invisible. In a drought this extreme, the soil crust is brittle. A single footstep, pawprint, or tire track off-trail shatters the biocrust, compacts the soil, and crushes the fragile roots these trees need now more than ever to survive such extreme drought.

Staying on the durable trail tread protects the fine root architecture of our beloved Ponderosa pines and ensures the soil remains uncompacted and aerated. When you #TravelOnTrail, you respect the Ponderosa stands that make Ute Valley Park special, preserve the soil, and protect the roots the pines will need to survive this year’s extreme xeric conditions.

#DontBustTheCrust #LeaveNoTrace #UteValleyPark #LandEthic

Credit and gratitude to the USFS, whose research reports, journal articles, and science syntheses written by Forest Service personnel informed this post.