Brief by Central Staff
Old munitions – August 2002 – Colorado Central Magazine
Fighting a wildfire is already a dangerous business. There’s the risk of getting caught when a fire flares, which killed firefighters at Storm King in 1994. And even if the fire isn’t nearby, there’s the risk of getting killed by a falling tree, which happened at Missionary Ridge this summer.
Fires around Camp Hale offer those risks, as well as a local danger: the chance that a 60-year-old piece of ammunition might explode.
Camp Hale sits a few miles north of Leadville on the far side of Tennessee Pass, and it opened in 1943 to train the ski troopers of the famed 10th Mountain Division (still in service, but now based at Fort Drum, N.Y.). It was abandoned in the 1960s and turned over to the U.S. Forest Service, which made the 250,000-acre site generally open to camping, hiking, and the like.
However, old munitions have shown up there in recent years, and so the Forest Service has closed part of the site, and cautioned visitors not to pick up rusty remnants. Since cleanup efforts began two years ago, nine pieces of unexploded ordnance have been found.
On July 7, lightning started a small fire high on Chicago Ridge. In a normal year, they might have let it just burn out, but this isn’t a normal year. So the Forest Service dispatched firefighters — along with a crew from the Army Corps of Engineers to clear away unexploded munitions.
The Corps crew found a live 57-mm shell, about the size of a soup can, and destroyed it. Once past that, the firefighting crew got the blaze put out on July 11.
If you see anything that could be an old munition at Camp Hale, don’t pick it up. Mark the location and tell the Eagle County Sheriff’s Office about it.
