Brief by Ed Quillen
Local news – January 2004 – Colorado Central Magazine
Lost and Found
The first heavy snows of winter are generally welcomed, since they mean skiers now and water next spring. But those storms aren’t a good place to spend the night.
On Nov. 17, 30-year-old Matt Rhoads of Salida parked atop Monarch Pass and headed south along the crest. He had his snowboard and his dog, a mix of shepherd and border collie; they reached the head of Foose’s Creek.
He didn’t have food, or any way to build a fire, and that became a problem when he realized he couldn’t get back to his car. But he managed to build a snow cave — which collapsed.
Then he found the strength to build a shelter with snow and his snowboard, and his collie joined him for warmth. Even so, “We just shivered through the night.”
He had left word with friends as to his general destination and travel plans, so when he didn’t return on time, they called the sheriff’s department. There was a quick search on Monday night; a full search, including an airplane and an avalanche dog, began Tuesday morning.
Even though he had to carry the dog and make post-hole steps through deep snow, Rhoads was able to make his own way out that day, and at about 4 p.m., he walked back to his car, giving rescuers a pleasant surprise just as they were about to suspend operations for the day.
Another search for a missing person also had a happy ending. On Nov. 23, Gunnison County residents Darwin Mears, 43, and his 24-year-old nephew, Garland Mears III, went on a late-season elk hunt in the Ohio Creek area.
A mile or two from where deep snow had stopped their pickup, Darwin and Garland shot a cow elk and dressed the carcass; they planned to return the next day to pack it out. So they headed back to the truck, but instead of following their own trail, they took a shortcut — and lost their bearings.
Garland made it back to the truck; Darwin took another course. Garland started the engine, turned on the lights and waited in the cold. Darwin lost his footing, slid down a hillside, and tried to start a fire — but it wouldn’t take.
By morning, the searchers were out. Darwin was moving, but he was snow-blind, so “I just closed my eyes, kept holding on to a fence, and hoped I was going in the right direction.” Eventually he got near Highway 135, where a sheriff’s deputy spotted him. He was taken to the hospital and treated for frostbite and hypothermia.
Big Straw Sucks
That’s essentially the conclusion from the state’s $500,000 study of proposals to tap the state’s unused share of Colorado River water with a reservoir near the Utah line and a pipeline to carry pumped water back up to the Continental Divide, where it could be distributed to Front Range Cities.
The study said that the project might take 27 years to build at a cost of $15 billion, and there would be annual operating costs of $721 million — more than anyone in Colorado wants to pay for water.
Count ’em again
Lake County’s ballots had to be recounted after the 2003 election, due to a mistake in the county clerk’s office. But it didn’t change the outcome of any races or ballot issues there.
The county uses paper ballots that are scanned and tabulated. After the scanning, some ballots had write-in names, and those were tabulated by hand. Then came the mistake — that pile of about 100 ballots got scanned again, so that those votes were counted twice on Election night.
Observations
“Forty years ago, I could sell a cow for $400. A new pickup truck cost $1,600. So, I could sell four cows and buy a new pickup truck. Today, I can sell a cow for the same $400-$500, and a new pickup truck costs $28,000-$30,000. Somewhere along the line things got out of kilter. In other words, I haven’t bought a new pickup truck in a long time.”
–Fred Field in the Gunnison Country Times
“Leadville will lose none of its character if it loses some of its trash and junk cars. We doubt if a little sprucing up will turn us into another Vail or Breckenridge.”
— Marcia Martinek in the Leadville-Herald Democrat
“This is what I think of our seasons: spring is useless, summer’s pretty nice, the fall can be terrific, and winter is king. Winter is king for any number of reasons. First, it’s the longest season, by far. It’s here now and we’ll have it at least until the middle of May. That’s about 26 weeks annually, or half the year. Those other three seasons have to compete for the other 26 weeks among themselves.”
— John Norton in the Gunnison Country Times
“The Saguache Creek Water Users Association has voted to have a ten-dollar bounty on beaver taken on Saguache Creek. Beaver tails must be accompanied by signed permission from property owner where beaver were taken. Contact Roy Archuleta for payment.”
— John L. Werner in the Saguache Crescent
Fun with Turkeys
Turkey shoots at Thanksgiving and Christmas time are a staple of rural life, although usually the shooting is at targets, rather than fowl, with the birds coming as prizes for the best shooters.
Students at Western State College in Gunnison got to try something different on Nov. 20 — the Turkey Bowl at the Keating Dining Hall. The bowling ball was a frozen turkey, and students aimed at 10 “pins” that were two-liter bottles of Coke.
Boarder Country
Salida and Saguache already have skateboard parks, and soon other towns will too.
Cold weather caused a few delays, but Buena Vista’s park has been graded, and the pad is scheduled to be poured soon, if it hasn’t been already. Fairplay has been raising money for an 80’x120′ park with rails and jumps, and hopes to start construction next spring. Gunnison already has a skateboard area in Jorgensen Park, but a group called Action Kids Coalition is raising money for a 12,000-square-foot addition for some extreme boarding.
While such parks offer wholesome recreation, there’s a caution to keep in mind. There’s an argument that kids won’t be skateboarding elsewhere in town if there’s a park. But that’s not true, as every Salida pedestrian knows by now.
Better Beach
The name “Fairplay Beach” may have started as a joke, but the pond and stream on the south side of the Park County seat has been a popular recreational attraction since it opened about a decade ago. It’s a pleasant spot for fishing, picnicking, strolling, and the like. (There was a short feature about it in the August, 2000, edition of Colorado Central.)
And it should get better next summer with some planned improvements: a bike path from Front Street to the beach, a new and bigger dock, and a bridge across the small reservoir.
Just how much it will be improved depends on money, of course. Rachel Edwards, the town’s park commissioner, has found about $55,000 from various local and state sources, and has applied for a grant from the Great Outdoors Colorado Fund.
About 2,300 people visit the beach each year. Unlike most beaches, the Fairplay Beach doesn’t allow swimming — but it does allow gold-panning, as long as people don’t dig into the dam.
Edwards noted that in recent drought years, as nearby reservoirs went dry, the beach stream and pond helped tourism continue, because there was still some trout-fishing.
Gas pains
You’d think that something which will pay $250,000 a year in property taxes would be welcome, especially in hard-pressed Lake County.
And it is, with reservations. It’s a $15 million storage facility for liquefied natural gas (LNG) that Xcel Energy wants to build near Malta. LNG would be trucked to the tank and stored there, to be released for Colorado customers (mostly in the metro area) during cold snaps when demand is high — less than 10 days a year.
On Nov. 24, the county planning commission approved it with three conditions. The LNG tanks may sit on a landslide site, so the county wants an independent examination of the ground’s stability. Xcel needs to train local emergency-response teams. And finally, the proposed tank is 77 feet high, and in that area near the airport, there’s a 35-foot height limit.
Westcliffe bodies
Last May, the body of a Custer County woman was found wrapped in a blue tarp at an old dump site along the Jenkins Park Road. The woman, later identified as 38-year-old Diane Mercer, had died of gunshot wounds.
No arrests have been made in that case, and now there’s another unsolved death of a woman in Custer County.
The victim was 20-year-old Natalie Drissell; her body was found on Nov. 26 near the Horn Creek Christian Conference Center south of Westcliffe.
Her home was in Missouri, and she was a college student in Florida. But she had worked at Horn Creek in the summer, and was on a Thanksgiving visit to friends.
An autopsy showed no sign of criminal violence, according to Sheriff Fred Jobe, and there were no drugs or alcohol. Further, even though she was wearing no clothes, she did not die of hypothermia.
Redcliff bridge
Colorado certainly has the mountains and canyons that make for spectacular bridge sites. But despite all the sites, we can think of only one really spectacular highway bridge: the steel arch bridge on U.S. 24 near Redcliff.
It will be closed from April 5 to July 3 for repairs. The deck will be replaced, and three feet will be added to each side of the road, so that there will be 12-foot lanes with 6-foot shoulders when the project is completed this fall. After July 3, one lane will be open until fall.
There’s already a pleasant detour, through the old mining town of Redcliff — where, we’ve heard, some residents aren’t pleased about getting all the highway traffic that used to bypass the town and use the handsome bridge.
(We should note, though, that you can’t really see most highway bridges from the highway, so there may well be other attractive bridges that we’ve driven over, but not observed in all their trusswork.)
