Letter from Roger Williams
Colorado Central – July 2007 – Colorado Central Magazine
Editors:
I just finished the latest issue I have, May 2007, N° 159. If a later one is out, I must have left it at McDonald’s across the street where I have McBreakfast in a “senior moment.” A few comments are in order:
Page 8, a steam unit: I’ve ridden the Cumbres & Toltec, Durango & Silverton and others like the Cripple Creek & Victor or Georgetown Loop, Ski Train etc. several times. Hope to ride the new train over La Veta Pass this summer. Appreciate the details.
Page 9, April Fools journalism: Our [Boulder] Colorado Daily paper missed its usual Colorado Daisy special again because April 1 was a Sunday and they stopped publishing on Sundays. I hoped it would appear on Monday but we just got the regular edition. It didn’t come out last year because April 1 was on Saturday and no paper then. It’s usually amusing, with the usual sort of unlikely hey-wait-a-minute April 1 news. Turn it over and the real news was on the back.
Police blotter: operating a snow machine (as they’re called in Alaska which is full of them) under the influence is a new one on me. I have read of a citation or summons for operating a horse under the influence, though. Wonder if this was common before horseless carriages appeared.
We just had a horrendous windstorm here with 90-MPH winds, rare in June. Yard littered with branches; a limb came down on a parked car; power out overnight. Then it got down to 34º F, a new record. Walked home from a lecture on Rocky Mountain Rescue at Neptune and nearly froze. In June. (Though I turned back from winter conditions on Horseshoe Mt. near Fairplay on July 4th once, staying in the old hotel and climbing it in better conditions the next day.) Also dodged snow squalls on Clark Peak the day people got heat stroke attending mass with the Pope in Cherry Creek Park.
“Farewell…”, p. 46: that mystery employer in Pueblo in the steel industry could only be Colorado Fuel & Iron, now Oregon Steel. I wonder if the Highline Trail out of Wetmore (Westcliffe?) is the Rainbow Trail which runs the length of the Sangre de Cristo Mountains. I remember starting up it with Rocky Mountain Expeditions (run by Dick & Jan Scar of Buena Vista, who still live there) on a weeklong (or longer) traverse of the range in 1975. We set off somewhere above Westcliffe I think, climbed Humboldt Peak on the way, continued over Music Pass and came out at Great Sand Dunes where we were picked up. A food resupply van before the pass brought startling news of a job with the Feds in Alaska. I got the job, and got to see in the nation’s 200th birthday on July 4, 1976 on the beach on the Arctic Ocean near Barrow, Alaska. There is also a Highline Trail across the High Uintas in Utah, north of Vernal; I’ve followed part of it.
I enjoyed another good issue. Hope I haven’t missed the next one.
Roger Williams
Boulder
