The Mount Zirkel Wilderness is a U.S. Wilderness Area located in Routt National Forest in northwest Colorado. The closest city is

Steamboat Springs, Colorado The City of Steamboat Springs is a home rule municipality that is the county seat and the most populous municipality of Routt County, Colorado, United States. Steamboat Springs is the principal city of the Steamboat Springs, CO Micropolitan Sta ...

. The wilderness is named after

Mount Zirkel Mount Zirkel is the highest summit of the Park Range of the Rocky Mountains of North America. The prominent peak is located in the Mount Zirkel Wilderness of Routt National Forest, north-northeast ( bearing 19°) of the City of Steamboat S ...

, the highest peak in the range at , which itself is named after German geologist

Ferdinand Zirkel Prof Ferdinand Zirkel Royal Society of London, FRS(For) HFRSE (20 May 183811 June 1912) was a German geologist and petrography, petrographer. Biography Zirkel was born in Bonn. Educated in his native town, he graduated PhD from the University o ...

. Some areas within the wilderness display

bedrock In geology, bedrock is solid Rock (geology), rock that lies under loose material (regolith) within the crust (geology), crust of Earth or another terrestrial planet. Definition Bedrock is the solid rock that underlies looser surface mater ...

composed of metamorphic schists with large garnet crystals.

Habitats

Most of the wilderness is blanketed in dense

spruce-fir forest A spruce is a tree of the genus ''Picea'' (), a genus of about 35 species of coniferous evergreen trees in the family Pinaceae, found in the northern temperate and boreal (taiga) regions of the Earth. ''Picea'' is the sole genus in the subfamil ...

s, although it also contains

alpine tundra Alpine tundra is a type of natural region or biome that does not contain trees because it is at high elevation, with an associated alpine climate, harsh climate. As the latitude of a location approaches the poles, the threshold elevation for alp ...

, montane forest, meadow, and riparian habitats. The southern portion of the wilderness is largely made up of a unique habitat called

ribbon forest Ribbon forest or tape forest are terms for forest that occurs in long thin bands. In many places this may be the result of deforestation, including deliberate attempts to leave a habitat corridor in largely deforested areas, to allow wildlife to m ...

, formed when large amounts of snow and wind keep tree growth restricted to north–south bands of trees, mostly about twenty feet across. The Buffalo Pass and Mad Creek regions receive more snowfall than anywhere else in Colorado. The central portion contains the wilderness's highest peaks and encompasses alpine tundra. North of this, the lower elevations of the Encampment River headwaters are covered in dense lodgepole pine and spruce-fir forest, which was partially burned in the Beaver Creek Fire of summer 2016.

References

IUCN Category Ib Protected areas of Jackson County, Colorado Protected areas of Routt County, Colorado Wilderness areas of Colorado Protected areas established in 1980 Routt National Forest 1980 establishments in Colorado {{Colorado-protected-area-stub