Lumpy ridge paid parking

I just noticed the sign today. Do rangers enforce this?

While you may not get asked for your pass at the second belay on Pear Buttress, please recognize that entrance fees support a huge amount of project work as well as staff including search and rescue.  So when you are recreating in a National Park, you should have a pass even if there isn't an entrance station enforcing it.

Philip Magistro wrote: While you may not get asked for your pass at the second belay on Pear Buttress, please recognize that entrance fees support a huge amount of project work as well as staff including search and rescue.  So when you are recreating in a National Park, you should have a pass even if there isn't an entrance station enforcing it.

So if you buy a pass to enter RMNP, is it good at Lumpy as well?

Buck Rio wrote:

So if you buy a pass to enter RMNP, is it good at Lumpy as well?

Yes, Lumpy Ridge is in Rocky Mountain National Park.

For what is is worth, that sign doesn't represent a change: entrance fees have always been required for RMNP.  And the fee is not simply for parking: it is the entrance fee for the National Park.  There are a variety of trailheads where (for different reasons) entrance fees aren't collected and enforced like at Fall River or Beaver Meadows.  Still required, however, and those fees truly support the maintenance and staffing of the Park.

I have always paid it, just didn't realize that it was required at Lumpy... (who would go to Estes Park and not go into the park proper?)

I've been to Lumpy probably a couple hundred times, including the great old days  when you could drive  thru the McGREGOR Ranch to the former trailhead,  (when the Glendenning water fountain actually worked) and several times so far this summer. There's never been any paid parking at either of those two lots, just as there's there's a few other RMNP trailheads without paid parking. I cannot imagine NPS setting up a pay station at Lumpy, but godamighty, with all the huge crowds using that lot, and the overflow parked out on the Devil's Gulch Road, they could make a mint if they did.

Where is this sign exactly ?
I was just at lumpy and never saw this

The sign is on one of the information stations next to the outhouse. To clarify, I was wondering more about rangers checking cars and if I would have to display my park pass like when I enter the RMNP before ranger stations are open. I think it was two years ago that park started to hand out these little clear folders that you could put your annual pass and attach it to your rear mirror so it’s visible.

I agree with Phil, but also do not as I've used that lot for a couple decades yes even when it was on the ranch and from there Lumpy was awesome.  

You'd hike out after a hot day hit that fountain for water and dunk your head under it.

 Sit on the stairs gazing across the valley at Longs.  

I never get tired of the views at Lumpy  I get it about the fees directly go to the Park and I usually buy an inter agency park pass from RMNP each year but at some point are they to charge someone whose hiked in from the wilderness ??

This is reminiscent of the forest service charging for parking too when the lot is all tax payer paid for and lots of national forests have other fees....

When does it stop ?