Jacy Marmaduke

jmarmaduke@coloradoan.com

Darla Sidles, 53

Birthplace: Blackwell, Oklahoma, but grew up across the Midwest

Family: A husband named Mark and a dog named Tigger

Work history: In about 25 years with NPS, she's worked all over the country, from Alaska to Philadelphia. Most recently, she was superintendent of Saguaro National Park in Arizona from 2009 to 2016.

Darla Sidles didn't grow up outdoorsy.

The Rocky Mountain National Park superintendent's family moved a lot when she was a kid, and her parents were more likely to take her to an estate sale than a hiking trail. The national park she's led for six months is the only one she ever visited in her youth.

"We only came here once," she recalled, sitting on the steps of the historic William Allen White cabin in Moraine Park. "I don’t remember a lot about that trip other than throwing snowballs and seeing the mountains for the first time, which was a big deal. We saw Buffalo Bill’s grave (outside Denver). The highlight, really, was having a summer vacation with my family."

Today, Sidles' childhood vacation spot is America's third-most visited national park with 4.5 million visits in 2016, nearly equivalent to every Front Range resident stepping foot in the park. The home of mountains, glaciers and a whole lot of elk has set new visitation records every year since 2014.

The pressures of mounting visitation, a federal hiring freeze and $63 million in unaddressed maintenance make Sidles' job more than a walk in the park, even for a 25-year NPS veteran. In her own words, here's what Rocky Mountain National Park's first female superintendent envisions for the park's future and how she plans to get there.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

Q: What makes Rocky Mountain National Park so special?

A: I think the Rocky Mountains and the Western landscape, with the proximity of Estes Park and Denver — it’s just a perfect intersection of wilderness and culture. My favorite spot in the park changes all the time, because there’s just so much. Every time I go somewhere new in the park, that’s my new favorite. Being closer to Denver had an appeal, but still being out here in the beauty of the wilderness and the mountains, it’s pretty ideal.

Q: Obviously, a lot of people agree with you there. What kind of challenges does the swell of visitation present for the park?

A: We love that this park is relevant and that people are coming here, but it does present challenges. One is resource protection. When you’ve got so many people and they’re creating trails where there were none, it’s essentially more people than the infrastructure can handle. The park-n-ride in Bear Lake fills up in the summer every day on weekends. Parking lots fill; there’s traffic congestion. There’s lines all the way to Lyons, actually. (Laughs)

And then the staff is impacted, too. A couple of years ago, we weren’t doing anything to restrict visitor traffic, and people were going up and they couldn’t find a place to park so there was road rage and parking lot rage and they were taking it out on the staff and volunteers.

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We're trying to eliminate some illegal off-road parking. We found people would just park on the tundra when they couldn’t find a spot, and that’s a serious issue because the alpine tundra is one of the most sensitive ecosystems there is. You create a little trail across that and it won't recover for many, many decades.

The NPS mission is to protect the resources for future generations and provide outstanding visitor experiences. So if you come up here and it’s completely crowded, that's probably not a quality experience, and it’s not good for the resources. So how do we find that proper visitor capacity balance to ensure the resources are protected and provide an outstanding experience? That’s our long-term goal.

Q: What are park leaders doing to deal with overcrowding?

A: This past summer we started implementing some short-term restrictions at Bear Lake and at Alpine Visitor Center and Wild Basin. When all these parking lots filled up, we would turn people around right (at the entrances) and say, "Hey, come back later and there'll be parking." That actually did help, because people knew what to expect. The farther you drive, the more frustrating it is when you realize you can't park.

We have to figure out a long-term strategy working with the communities, Grand Lake and Estes Park and Lyons, to say, how can we work better together to give visitors better information up front so they know not to come on Saturday between 10 and 4. If you want to come, you have to come early, or during the week or at a different time of year. We also know it’s not just a matter of, "Hey, let's load up more shuttles." That is not the answer.

Zion (National Park in Utah) is a good example of that. They put more shuttles in and they had like 6 minute headway between shuttles, and they’ve got more than hour-long waits for people to get on those shuttles. We'll keep putting short-term visitor restrictions at these three busy spots this summer.

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There’s a bunch of parks out there looking at ways to manage visitation. Anything from reservation systems for busy areas — Zion is looking at a bunch of alternatives, including potential permit systems for the Narrows and Angel's Landing. Grand Teton (National Park) has Moose Wilson Road, and they’re looking at a queueing system, where they allow in a certain number of cars. One car in, one car out. That will probably be in our toolbox of things to propose. But we have to get input from our communities and the public. We have to present them with some options and ask them what they’d recommend, so it's not a quick process. We're hoping to do something for the long-term probably starting in the next fiscal year, which is October. It'll probably take a couple of years.

Q: Do you think visitation will continue to increase? January and February 2017 visitation was actually down from the two previous years.

A: We don't even know if the visitor increases will continue. They have, obviously, for the past few years. Some people thought that was because of the park service centennial and Rocky's centennial. But you all know the Front Range population growth is exploding, and they're coming here.

Q: You've said you want to focus on the park's staff, which includes 400-some employees and 2,700 volunteers. How do you want to do that, and why is it important?

A: We have a lot of challenges with increased visitation and the current hiring freeze (that President Donald Trump put in place after he assumed office). We're asking people to do a lot. So I want to make sure we're taking care of them, giving them the support and the resources they need to do their jobs safely and well.

I think in general for the parks service, we really need to take care of our employees. That’s a challenge for the whole parks service. Because we hire people and don’t always give them the training they need, the attention they need. If you work in a place that supports you and takes care of your needs, you’re going to do your job well. If you take care of the people, they’ll take care of the job. I think we do a pretty good job here at Rocky, but our budgets are tough when we're trying to decide between staffing a kiosk and providing training. One's internal and one's external. In the face of all this increased visitation, finding that balance is one of the biggest things.

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Up at Bear Lake, when visitation was so high and before we implemented these short-term restrictions, many of the staff didn’t come back. Day in and day out, they dealt with enraged visitors. That's no way to treat your employees. We heard from a number of folks, "This is not what I signed up for." … The park service has been around for over 100 years. The mission has stayed the same for 100 years. It's becoming harder to accomplish our mission, I think. (She pauses.) But we're optimistic! We have to be. We have to hire the right staff and give them the right tools and not overwhelm them.

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Q: There's been a lot of uncertainty about funding for national parks lately. What's Rocky Mountain's funding future?

A: It remains to be seen. We saw the president's proposed budget with a decrease for the Department of the Interior, but there's a number of agencies within the department, so it’s too soon to tell what that means for the National Park Service. We've heard nothing. I try to tell my staff, that’s the proposed budget. That does not mean that’s our budget. And we don’t know what it means for the park service. The great thing is, the American people love the national parks. I think that support is really critical.

Q: Are you living near the park now? How has your living situation changed your views on housing for employees?

A: I'm living in the park now. They give you a temporary place to live while you find a place. I get to walk to work, which is awesome. But you can imagine, when you live at your place of work you never get to switch off. So it’s nice to get out of the fish bowl and live in the community. We're going to be closing on a house in Lyons — knock on wood.

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It's hard to find housing here. That's a priority, too. It's so expensive. Both at the park and in Estes, all the businesses want to hire employees but employees can’t afford to live here. So a lot of them come from Longmont, Boulder, Fort Collins, Loveland. That’s a long way to go every day.

Q: You're the park's first female superintendent. How do you feel about that?

A: It’s kind of funny, because I don’t really think about it until someone brings it up. I’ve never really experienced any barrier in my career, so it just seems like a natural transition. You do your best and be yourself and things work out. But yeah, it’s cool, and I’m very proud, especially when little girls come up and their mothers say, "She’s the first female superintendent, isn’t that amazing?" Of course, for girls these days, it doesn't mean as much. But for older women, it means a lot. I went to a League of Women Voters event here in Estes Park, and they were very excited about it. It’s kind of a generational thing.

Q: What are your goals for preserving the park's resources and resiliency to climate change?

A: We had a lot of research and worked with a lot of scientists ... to do research on climate change in the park. We do air quality monitoring and look at the long-term impacts of nitrogen deposition from the Front Range. We're looking at stream and alpine lake research. And we’re trying to figure out what are the impacts of climate change, and what do they look like for this park? You can just look around and see how dense the forests are. With decades of forest fire prevention, it's created these dense forests that, if (a fire does) start, it’s extremely difficult to handle.

Q: The National Park Service puts a lot of emphasis on making parks relevant for everyone. Why do you think that's important?

A: Right now, if you go to most national parks, it's primarily people that look like me, older Caucasians. We really want to get the stories of the national parks out there, and I think we've been doing a great job of that the last few years to bring new units into our parks that are more relevant to other populations. The civil rights parks that talk about the journey we've had toward civil rights, and the new one is Stonewall (National Monument in in Greenwich Village, New York City). If we can tell the story of American history and be relevant to all kinds of people, then more people will support parks in the future. Not everybody appreciates us, and that’s OK, but hopefully there’s something in our group of parks that does resonate with everybody in some way.

RMNP fast facts

Established: Jan. 26, 1915

2017 budget: $12.7 million

2016 visitation: 4.5 million, a record

Square miles: 415

Highest elevation: Longs Peak, 14,259 feet

Campgrounds: 5 plus individual backcountry sites, with Moraine Campground being the most popular.

Hiking trails: 300 miles

Roads: Trail Ridge Road is the country's highest continuously paved road, topping out at more than 12,000 feet. It is the park's hope each year to have it open by Memorial Day.

Busiest month: July is typically the busiest month in the park. Last year, the month saw 912,507 visitors, the most in a single month in park history.

Autumn awe: Fall is very popular due to the elk bugling and aspen viewing. In September, visitation is 50 percent higher on weekends than weekdays

Information: (970) 586-1206 or www.nps.gov/romo





Deferred maintenance

Rocky Mountain National Park had about $63 million in deferred maintenance as of September 2015, the most recent data available. Park officials expected that backlog to increase because they identified more deferred maintenance than they resolved in 2016.

Unaddressed maintenance includes things like trail work and road paving.

While Congress pays for park operations, the Federal Lands Recreation Enhancement Act enables Rocky Mountain National Park to keep 80 percent of its visitor fees to use for upgrades in campgrounds, restrooms and roads.

The park plans to invest more than $8 million in deferred maintenance in 2017 and $5.3 million in 2018. Together, that's about 20 percent of the park's maintenance backlog. Big projects slated for 2017 include:

$2 million in pavement preservation on Trail Ridge and Bear Lake roads

$2 million in rehabilitation of water and wastewater systems

$1.7 million in trail rehabilitation

$600,000 in building maintenance

Project funding for 2018 is less certain, according to park officials. The park submitted requests for an additional $53 million in project funding for deferred maintenance from 2019 to 2023.