Review by Ed Quillen
Local Guidebook – June 2001 – Colorado Central Magazine
Explore It! – A Self-Guided Tour Book for the Upper Arkansas Valley
by Ralph and Pam Rosenberg
Published in 2001 by the authors
ISBN 1-881637-05-0
THIS MIGHT BE the ideal book to keep around for visiting relatives this summer — just lend it to them when they have a free day and you don’t, and they’ll be able to find their own way to a variety of interesting places between Twin Lakes and Salida.
Explore It! has five one-day trips, all accessible by standard autos, and these aren’t the “hidden spots that nobody else knows about” that guidebook writers often like to promote.
All the suggested trips are to reasonably well-known areas like Interlaken, Clear Creek, Cottonwood Pass, St. Elmo and Marshall Pass, and each gets a few pages.
The maps are clear, and their descriptions and directions fit with my recollections. For instance, they say the trail to “Agnes Falls,” reached from Chalk Creek, is “a moderate, thirty-minute walk,” and that’s exactly how I remember it.
But I also remember that the trail goes to Agnes Vaille Falls, not Agnes Falls, and that’s one of the problems with this book — it’s marred by minor errors.
For instance, Explore It! mentions a pleasant trail from Winfield to the old Banker Boy Mine, where “Old timbers are still visible at the entrance to the mine, which is called an audit,” followed by the explanation that “Horizontal entrances are called audits, while vertical entrances are referred to as shafts.”
Those horizontal entrances are adits, not audits.
Or, the book tells us that “Kit Carson was one of those who operated his stages and freighters from Leadville over Independence Pass [to Aspen].” Kit Carson died in 1868, and there was no road over Independence Pass until the discovery of silver in the Aspen area in 1879.
But otherwise, this should be a useful and informative book for the newcomer or visitor who wants to get more familiar with the southern Sawatch Range. Each tour offers some history, short walks and activities (like touring a fish hatchery or museum), and picnic and fishing spots.
The walks and activities are all designed for people of normal physical abilities in normal vehicles, and Explore It! offers an agreeable introduction to some supernal territory.
— Ed Quillen
