Letter from Bruce Salisbury
Geography – September 2008 – Colorado Central Magazine
Editors:
On the 6th of August a small group of us gathered at Mount KIA/MIA. Royce and Barry Raven, and Barry’s wife Raman came there to climb the mountain for all the KIA/MIA, and to determine a best route and to take photos of the event.
My wife and I parked there at the Shirley Site while they did the hard work of climbing up to the top. What a peaceful place. Even with the occasional ATV and 4WD and Dirt Bike cruising past the site, it seemed that folks were dedicated to enjoying the area and were not at all rowdy.
When Royce called us from the top via cell phone, and told us that they were setting up the five flags of our uniformed armed services, along with Old Glory, it was a thrill.
Barry is a 44-year-old mountain climber (who does category 5 stuff) and he took his dad to climb Kilimanjaro back in 2001. The dad ( Royce) is a Korean War veteran friend of mine in his late 70’s. Barry’s wife is a 106-pound lady who volunteered to climb with them.
The day was beautiful,the sky was blue, the winds calm. They came down from the mountain around 2:30 p.m. and traveled down to Home Lake, Colorado where we placed the flags in the veterans’ museum for safekeeping, perhaps to some day be part of a Mount KIA/MIA Museum.
As we headed home the rains came, and that was the evening they had mud-slides on La Veta Pass. Dottie and I had a slow drive home (due to a hammering rain) and arrived home at 9 p.m.
Barry should have the DVD’s and CD’s completed in the coming week, and he will put his photos, maps, and climb data on his Web Page. That will be nice because there have been so many people asking me about data on how to climb the mountain. There is still climbing time for those who want to climb KIA/MIA this year.
Bruce Salisbury
Aztec, N.M.
