By Virginia McConnell Simmons When snow and cabin fever piled up, miners might schuss over to Pitkin for a drink while awaiting spring and another chance to strike it rich at last. After all, a disgusted prospector whacked his hammer into a rock and broke off a tangle of pure silver wire from a boulder that proved to be 80 percent silver, starting the boom on Gunnison County’s Quartz Creek in 1879. (In those days, skis were called “snowshoes.”) [InContentAdTwo]