Brief by Martha Quillen
Regional News – August 2006 – Colorado Central Magazine
Sporting Events Marred By Tragedy
Diane Woolwine, a 65-year-old participant in the annual Ride the Rockies bicycle tour, died in Salida on June 22. According to the police account reported in the Mountain Mail, Woolwine and five other cyclists had stopped on the shoulder of U.S. 50 for the traffic light in front of Wal-Mart. But when the light turned green, Woolwine veered left into the traffic lane, and struck the side of a traveling motorhome; whereupon she went down and under the wheels of the vehicle.
Woolwine was pronounced dead at the scene, and police concluded that the driver of the motorhome was not at fault, and could have done nothing to prevent the accident. A Ride the Rockies representative told the Mail that this was the first fatal accident for the event in twelve years, and the third fatality in the bicycle tour’s 21-year history. At the time of her accident, Woolwine and her friends were not on the designated Ride the Rockies course.
Another accident took the life of Jimmy Clark at the Colorado High School State Rodeo finals near Denver. Clark, a 64-year-old volunteer from Gunnison County, was opening chutes for the bucking events. It was a task the former bull rider had handled hundreds of times, but on June 25th, a bull twisted around and kicked him hard. Clark was rushed to a hospital but died of massive internal bleeding about three hours later.
A seemingly tireless Crested Butte resident, Clark gave his time to high school rodeo, and also volunteered at Cattlemen’s Days. He was active in the Gunnison area’s “Tough Enough to Wear Pink” campaign, which was launched to raise money for breast cancer prevention. He also co-hosted several local concerts, and had helped raise funds for the Adaptive Sports Center in Crested Butte, an organization which provides outdoor recreational opportunities for those with physical and developmental disabilities. He was a husband, father, and grandfather, and had recently opened Cowboy’s Bar-B-Que and Saloon in Crested Butte with several partners.
Winning Rancher
In the July 10th issue, Newsweek included Wet Mountain Valley rancher Randy Rusk of Custer County as one of its “15 Winners Who Use Fame, Fortune, Heart and Soul to Help Others.” The magazine honored Rusk for setting up “a conservation easement on his family’s 1,500-acre spread” and selling his land’s development rights to the Trust for Public Land, a national non-profit, “for less than half its $4 million market value.”
“What’s in it for him?” the magazine asked.
“He can count on the trust and its local partners to keep the property intact forever, ensuring that his grandkids can continue to ranch.”
“It’s hard to walk away from half of your net worth,” Rusk told the magazine. “And it sure didn’t make me real popular around here at first. But if you love the land, you want to keep it whole.”
Other Newsweek Winners included violinist Aaron Dworkin, special needs teacher Jo McGlin, nurse Ruby Jones, along with the more famous Brad Pitt and Rick Warren, plus a doctor, a soldier, a retired librarian, and the Target Corporation.
Murder Suspected
On June 21, Leslie De Vault Slama, 57, of Gilbert, Ariz. was found dead in the bedroom area of a mobile home at a campground north of Buena Vista “with an apparent gunshot wound to the head.”
According to the June 29 Chaffee County Times, the victim’s husband, Joseph Slama, was subsequently identified as a “person of interest” by Chaffee County Sheriff Tim Walker. “We always treat a death as a homicide case until we find out otherwise,” the sheriff told the newspaper. “We have not ruled out homicide quite yet.”
Due to the nature of the incident, the Colorado Bureau of Investigation Crime Lab was assisting in the investigation and the body was sent to Colorado Springs. On June 29th, local officials were still awaiting word on the autopsy and toxicology results.
Search and Rescue
Rescue teams in Central Colorado have assisted numerous lost and waylaid hikers since the summer season began, but two experienced climbers missing in the Sangre de Cristo Range were not so fortunate.
Douglas Beach, 34, of Cheyenne, Wyoming, an experienced mountain climber and firefighter — and a search and rescue worker, himself — planned to climb the north route up Challenger and Kit Carson Peaks and return home on Sunday, June 10. But he failed to return, and was reported missing on Tuesday morning.
After a Saguache County sheriff’s officer found Beach’s vehicle still at the trailhead, rescue personnel from Wyoming came down and joined Gunnison, Saguache, Custer and Alamosa County searchers to find the lost climber. As it turned out, Beach had fallen to his death on Kit Carson, and his body was found on June 14.
Another experienced climber, Hugh Reid Jr., 58, had climbed all of Colorado’s 14,000-ft. peaks, but fell about 200 feet to his death on Sunday, July 2, while scaling a series of ledges in the Sangres with two friends. Due to bad weather on Monday, rescue crews halted their recovery attempts on Pico Asilado, a 13,611-ft. mountain near Crestone Needle. They planned to resume their efforts to retrieve Reid’s body on Tuesday morning, but just as teams prepared for the recovery, several were called away to search for three hikers who hadn’t returned to camp the previous evening.
As it turned out, the three hikers had merely hunkered down to wait out the storm. They were found by another hiker that morning, and he in turn notified search teams, which made for several happy endings — despite the disheartening nature of the original rescue operation.
Wild and Not So Wild Life
* A June 22 Chaffee County Times cutline reported a “Moose on the loose” crossed CR 327 heading south toward the Lost Creek Ranch.
* The June 15 Gunnison Country Times apologized for using the word “snafu,” saying that “what we did not know at the time was the origin of the word as a military acronym. That acronym contains language that is unfit for a community newspaper publication.”
That acronym went untranslated in the Times, but in case anyone doesn’t know, it stands for “Situation Normal, All F**ked Up.” Although rare, more circumspect speakers sometimes say it means “all fouled up.”
* In the wet — but perhaps not wild — category, hydrologic analysts are trying to determine the source of a wetland where the Heart of the Rockies Regional Medical Center wants to build the new Salida hospital.
The site had been picked and the architectural plans presented to the community, when the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers halted the project due to its encroachment on a wetland. Now, hired hydrologic consultants and the U.S. Department of Agriculture are both conducting studies to determine whether a proper permit should be issued “after the fact.”
And Other Odds and Ends
* The Gunnison County landfill burst into blazes twice in two weeks this June.
* On June 29th, the Gunnison Country Times showed a picture of an airplane at Gunnison Valley Aviation that had been flipped over onto the top of another plane by a “dust devil, or a rotating updraft of wind.”
* A wood pile near a home in the Salida area went up in flames, most likely from a lightning strike (although further investigation was expected). After extinguishing the flames, Salida firefighters cautioned that “wood piles should be stored at least 20 feet from homes to reduce the potential of a blaze spreading to a dwelling.”
* Due to heavy rainfall, three feet of mud and rock slid over Poncha Pass on July 3, and U.S. 285 was closed for about 90 minutes, backing up abundant holiday traffic in both directions. When the muck was almost cleared away, a truck driver jackknifed his semi-trailer into the hillside, apparently to avoid a collision with the stalled traffic. No one was injured in the incident.
* The July 6th Gunnison Country Times featured the Steve Guerrieri family’s decision to implement a conservation easement to prohibit development, forever, on the Lazy F Bar Ranch at the base of Crested Butte Mountain. They arranged for the easement with the aid of the Gunnison Ranchland Conservation Legacy program, which set a goal in 1996 to protect 30,000 acres and has thus far secured 14,868 acres.
* Paul M. Zeller, 24, was shot and killed by an unknown assailant at a shopping center in Arlington, Virginia on June 30th. The son of Dwight and Lois Zeller, founders of the Sangre de Cristo Seminary near Westcliffe, Paul was a decorated veteran of the Iraqi War who’d spent most of his life in the Westcliffe area. He was living with his sister and her family in Arlington, a Washington D.C. suburb, at the time of his death.
Quotes
“Even the dead at the cemeteries cannot rest in peace.”
Jim Markalunas, 71-year old complaining about modern traffic and construction, originally in the Aspen Times, quoted by Mountain Town News.
“Turned backwards and wedged between two rocks, it looked like a giant mushroom.
“That’s what campers thought they had found when they stumbled upon a human skull while out hiking at Wellington Lake …. about 11 miles southeast of Bailey.”
Cate Malek, staff writer, Fairplay Flume, June 16.
“In the New West, a community’s ‘leaders’ no longer exist to serve the town that is — they work feverishly to shape the town it will become. …. It’s an ironic tragedy that the futures of communities are left in the hands and minds of planners; the problem is, they’re always PLANNING something. Show me a planner (or a politician) who can leave something alone and I’ll show you a man or woman held in low regard by the rest of his peers.”
Jim Stiles, publisher, The Canyon Country Zephyr, Moab, June/July.
“Please start our subscription with the July 2006 issue. I realize we’re late, but we live here in the Valley, so we’re used to it.”
Barbara and Chuck Tidd, Moffat, note to C.C.
“Letters to the editor are exercises in freedom of the press, guaranteed by law in the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution (in the Bill of Rights).”
Mike Bullock, editor of The Chaffee County Times, who goes on to explain what kind of letters he will not print.
“Khalid Muhammad, with his wife Laverne Allgood, says his son was upset about something before he went to the Safeway distribution warehouse Sunday and shot and killed one co-worker and wounded four others and a police officer before police shot and killed him.”
Cutline in Denver Post, June 29.
“Bale out on curves
“Colorado Department of Transportation employees had a ‘hay day’ Thursday when a truck lost a portion of its load on U.S. 50 near the Fremont/Chaffee county line.”
Cutline in Mountain Mail after a load of hay on a semi shifted and overturned.
“Is it curtains for Christo?”
Headline in June 15 Chaffee County Times. (And the answer, of course, is Yes. Whether the proposed suspension of panels across the Arkansas is approved or not, Over the River will be curtains).
