Aspen at Bear Lake.

It was “free” weekend at Rocky Mountain National Park, meaning everyone in Denver with a car came on Saturday and Sunday to see the aspens change and the elk bugle — two events that decisively mark the season in Colorado. I made the mistake of arriving mid-morning Saturday, with everyone else. There is something very, very wrong about a traffic jam in a national park. I parked and took a hiker’s shuttle, which was also functioning more like the Ginza line in Tokyo than a serene transport to the wonders of nature. All that receded into the background once I’d gotten a mile onto the trails. More than 90 percent of the visitors to Yellowstone National Park never set foot off of concrete, and I suspect the ratio holds in Rocky. That’s as sad as a traffic jam in a national park, but it’s just as true.

The mountains grandly presided over the various processions and spectacles. Elk bugled and mated as tourists idiotically wandered toward them with their digital cameras held in front of the their faces like chalices to the altar. I did my hike, endured another jam-packed shuttle ride (with the driver cursing all the cars illegally parked on the sides of the road) and spent part of the afternoon with the milling crowds in Estes Park; more traffic jams, and shoulder to shoulder on the sidewalks. At a coffee shop, the kid at the counter laughed hysterically when I asked him if he considered it a busy day. “Medium,” he said. “Check it out in August.”

The next day I got to the Bear Lake parking lot at 7:30 a.m. and had it to myself. I wanted to climb a mountain and I chose Flattop, an relatively easy 12,320-foot peak. It was a 4.4 mile hike with a 3,000-foot elevation gain. The woods were mostly empty. I ran into a couple of local hikers in their 60s with “Beep or honk when passing” signs attached to their daypacks. The man was a transplant from Jordan, Minn. He was wearing an “Up a Mountain, Down a Beer” T-shirt. “This is what we do on Sundays,” he said.

The trail was rocky, but gently graded, and relentlessly sloped upward. The trees got smaller and more sparsely distributed the higher I got. In 90 minutes, I was above the treeline. The wind picked up. I could see snowy peaks, eye-dropper lakes and in the distance, the shore of the Great Plains. Along the path, I encountered a metal plate, bolted to a boulder. It was headlined “The Mountains Don’t Care.” The sign explained that storms could rise at any moment, and that the paths across Flattop would be hard to follow in a whiteout. Every year, prepared and unprepared hikers die at the whim of the weather and chance.

I made it to the top, and had lunch in the lee of a big rock, out of the wind. I watched other climbers cross a ridge and ascend Hallett Peak (photo). From there, I could see both sides of the Continental Divide. And I could see that the parking lot at Bear Lake was now full. When I got off the trail, there’d be another traffic jam to endure, and on the radio, news of national disarray. The mountains don’t care. Scary, and reassuring at the same time.

St. Paul climber Mike Farris called from Base Camp on K2 in Pakistan last night to say he had waited long enough, and he’s going to walk away from the mountain. “It’s time to come home,” he said.

Farris, an associate professor of biology at Hamline University, spent the last 10 days waiting for a weather window to open so he could make a second summit attempt, but high winds are forecast for the higher altitudes, and Farris said he was starting to worry about his physical condition.

“The winds won’t be low enough for an attempt for at least 10 days,” he said via satellite phone. “I’ve been doing a lot of sitting around the last 10 or 11 days, and my fitness isn’t coming back to what I need to summit.” Farris had a bout of food poisoning on Monday, and he’s been living at 17,000 feet and above for nearly two months.

Farris was part of an expedition group of seven men attempting to summit K2. He had started a summit attempt but was waiting for an inner ear condition to clear at Camp II when the events of Aug. 2-3 unfolded. A large group of climbers had reached the summit and upper slopes of K2, the world’s second highest mountain, but an avalanche struck a set of fixed ropes as they were descending. Eleven climbers died, and the course of events still isn’t clear, Farris said.

“I and the other climbers here have spent a lot of time trying to piece together what happened,” he said. “It’s very complicated — more complex than what happened on Everest in ‘96. There it was pretty clear, a storm hit. Here there appear to be multiple causes, and it’s going to be some time before we know.”

Farris stayed at Camp II and assisted surviving climbers in their descents. He decided to stay on at K2, hoping for a second chance to summit. He said he’s disappointed, but that he was prepared for this eventuality.

” On K2, the weather rules the kingdom,” he said. “You have to take what you’re given. So far this season there have been two days where it was possible to attempt to summit. The chances are small to make it even when the conditions are good.”

Mike Farris’ original K2 team has now departed, leaving him on the mountain with a group reconstituted from several expeditions, he writes in a new post Saturday. They’re waiting for a suitable weather window to make an attempt on the mountain, which is several hundred feet shorter than Everest (or perhaps “less tall” we should say) but is much more technically difficult and unpredictable. That more than 70 climbers have died (including 11 last week) on K2 testifies to the severity of the challenge. That knowledge is even more sobering when you consider that on K2, there are not many wannabes, climbers who pay big bucks to have a guide usher them up to the top, as has become common on Everest. Generally speaking, those who have the guts to climb K2 have developed the mountaineering skills to make it seem feasible. When I interviewed Farris two years ago, I asked him the question that is probably most often put to high-altitude climbers. Why do it? His answer: “The British have an expression about the “rat in the belly” as a way to talk about why people climb. They say some people have a small rat that gets some food and is satisfied, while others have a rat that gets bigger and hungrier the more you feed it. When I am coming down from these trips I always think I’m never going to do it again. But after a while I start to remember the good experiences — which are hard to relay in words — and then there’s that rat in the belly, that challenge to try again. It looks suspiciously like addictive behavior, but I guess you can be obsessive about anything.” I think of that answer now, him sitting at the base of the mountain, waiting for another chance to climb. He’s been living there for most of the summer under trying conditions. He’s seen 11 people die, and still he’s waiting.  I don’t know if it’s heroic or foolish. But I know that I’m one of those people whose rat is more easily quieted, and I’m glad for it.

Farris has climbed in the Pakistani Himalayas several times: This photo is from a previous trip at K2.

Hamline associate biology professor Mike Farris has decided to stay behind at base camp on K2 as the rest of his six-climber team heads home.

“The calculus that went into this decision is both simple and complex. I want to explain my thinking so hopefully you aren’t convinced that I’m an utter idiot,” he wrote on his personal blog this morning. He goes on to say that he will only make the attempt under certain conditions. He said there is a group of competent climbers at base camp, and that his equipment is already set up at Camp 2: He’ll only have to carry food up the lower mountain. He said he’d only make a single attempt, assuming he is part of a group effort, then come home.

As for the series of accidents that led to the deaths of 11 climbers, Farris said it’s too soon to know what happened. “I know as much about the details of what happened as anyone does, and believe me, NOBODY knows just what happened yet.”

The title of his blog entry was “Back to the Dragon’s Lair.” “The title refers to the scene near the end of the Hobbit where Bilbo creeps into the dragon’s lair and steals a gold cup while the dragon sleeps,” Farris writes. “Ascending K2 involves stealth and intelligence, not a massive military style attack. My goal is to see if the dragon is asleep, then maybe, just maybe, steal a trinket and escape.”

ike Farris, a biology professor at Hamline University, was attempting to climb K2 with six other climbers when an avalanche roared down the mountain in the Pakistani Himalayas Friday, resulting in the deaths of at least 11 climbers.Farris (who I profiled two years ago) reports in his blog that he helped in the rescue attempts and was back at base camp as of Sunday. It seems possible his team was among those who helped rescue Italian climber Marco Confortola, the last climber rescued today.At last count, 11 climbers are dead, and it will be some time before we know exactly how it happened. Farris’s last blog post was Sunday. I’m trying to contact his friends and relatives for any new information. Watch this space for updates, and if you know Farris, please e-mail me at welsch@startribune.com.Farris, 52, is an accomplished climber who wrote “Rock Climbing in Minnesota and Wisconsin” for Falcon Guides. On Sept. 2 his new book comes out: “The Altitude Experience: Successful Trekking and Climbing above 8,000 Feet.” The new book combines information on the affects of altitude on the body with advice on how to climb safely in extreme conditions.Farris has climbed high peaks in the Himalayas multiple times. In 2006 he successfully summited Gasherbrum in Pakistan, a 26,362 foot high mountain. He was a key player in a high altitude rescue on Broad Peak in Pakistan in 2004.