Colorado - Rocky Mountain High
It all started with an article in the Dallas Morning News Travel section back in September of 2001. It described an incredible biking and hiking experience. In August, as I was cleaning out my desk, I came across the article. With our departure for Thailand looming on the near horizon, it was incumbent on me do this now or perhaps never do it at all. Who knows if I would ever have a chance or have the physical strength and stamina to do this at some point in the future. So this was an imperative. When I told Cindy about this, she just looked at me and said, "So this is a guy thing." I'm too old to be having a mid life crisis, so maybe she's right. Anyway, she was not really all that excited about the physical aspects of hiking and biking and several other friends weren't either, so I decided to go it alone. This was just something I was determined to do before we left for Thailand and as much as I would have liked some company, I was prepared from the start to go it alone if necessary.
Several things struck me about Colorado. First, the weather was incredible as it usually is in late September. The temperature was supposedly in the high 40s, but when I stepped out of the airport into that bright, clear, crisp day, the long sleeve shirt I was wearing was perfect. Perhaps it was a dry cold. What a treat this was compared to those hot, humid, muggy Dallas summers.
The next thing I noticed once I got on I-70 West out of Denver heading the 180 miles to Glenwood Springs, was the incredible scenery. There were six and seven percent grades and spectacular mountain vistas all around. It was exhilarating. I just couldn’t help thinking what it must have been like for those early pioneers as they came through what must have been almost impenetrable pine forests, not knowing what lay ahead and how far this went on. Most likely they followed the rivers such as the Colorado --- those untamed waters were no picnic either --- even if they just walked along the bank, if in fact, there were a bank. At certain times of the year, there probably wasn't any.
I was also taken by the power lines that were strung up and along canyon walls. It’s just hard to comprehend how those lines were laid down and then raised, jutting out as they are at such weird angles and towering over the canyon floor. And just how did they get the equipment up there to sink the hole and drop in the pole?
Speaking of forests, another thing that struck me was how some of these trees had taken hold in the most unlikely places, like small crags on nearly vertical cliffs or in rocky debris, which had washed off of canyon walls. This was nature bringing life, however tenuous, to otherwise barren and uninhabitable spaces.
Then there were the “rock slide” zones along various stretches of the highway where signs would scream out to you to be aware. On a couple of occasions, I observed steel mesh nets draped over the cliffs so boulders would be held against the rock face even as they tumbled to the ground rather than bouncing onto passing cars. In addition there were fences and other barriers to restrain these meandering boulders . The Colorado Department of Transportation goes to great lengths to identify possible risk areas, to the point of having personnel roam the canyon rims and even repel down the canyon walls looking for trouble spots. But given the number of areas to be covered, the cumulative effects of water freezing and thawing, vegetation working its way into cracks between rocks, or the random mountain goat displacing a rock, which starts a series of events leading to a slide, the basic instability of the entire area is rife for rock slides.
Two months after my September visit, on Thanksgiving Day, all of these devices failed as 200 tons of rock (that's about 170 dump truck loads) fell some 1,500 feet from a canyon wall and came crashing down on the highway. Boulders as big as minivans demolished several lanes of the highway and created craters six and more feet deep. Imagine one of those babies landing in your passenger seat ... or in your driver seat. Cost of highway repairs would run close to $1 million and take several months. Fortunately the highway was closed at the time due to a truck accident near the scene. In fact, just one hundred feet east is a fence to stop rocks and ice from hitting the highway, and 100 feet west is a rock fall barrier, but both would have been crushed under the weight of a landslide like the one that occurred on Thanksgiving.
Talking about highways, I encountered the infamous “runaway truck” lanes. These are supposed to be a way of slowing trucks whose brakes have failed on one of these treacherous downgrades. The ones I had seen in the past were merely extensions of sand along the side of the road that would serve to bring the truck to a halt. The ones I saw along I-70 were strategically placed so that they actually ran up rather steep embankments. You can see in the photo how it climbs virtually to the top of the hill straight ahead as the highway itself veers around the hill to the left. What I found somewhat amusing was that there were signs that would say that the “runaway truck lane” was 1 ½ miles ahead or 2000 feet ahead. I can just see the panicky truck driver saying, “If I can only hold on for another 2000 feet without running over the edge, I’ll make it.”
