Trail & Timberline, Issue 1004

Finding the Golden Light 16 • the canyons of colorado 28 • Beyond Rocky 34

Trail & timberline The Colorado Mountain Club • Fall 2009 • Issue 1004 • www.cmc.org

Believing saving is

Establishing Rocky Mountain National Park

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If only money flowed like water...

Maintaining our programs requires a steady stream of donations.

Start donating year-round through our electronic funds transfer (EFT) program today.

www.cmc.org/support

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Letter from the CEO The Magic

I

used to dislike hiking. Now, before you wonder how the CEO of the Colorado Mountain Club can get away with not always being a lover of mountain quests, let me explain. I was a professional runner for many years: I would train two, three, sometimes even seven hours a day! The last thing you want to do after working out so much is go on a hike. So, for years I gave up hiking much to the dismay of my dog.

Now that I’m retired from running professionally, it seems like all I want to do is hike! My husband and I recently took a week off to play in Telluride and Crested Butte. We hiked for five days straight and

"We hiked for five days straight and loved every minute of it. We talked, we were silent; we noticed nature, and we were reminded once again (at a slower pace) of how magical our state really is." loved every minute of it. We talked, we were silent; we noticed nature, and we were reminded once again (at a slower pace) of how magical our state really is.

Speaking of magical, the CMC has had a pretty spectacular year when it concerns conservation. Rocky Mountain National Park was designated as wilderness along with Dominguez Canyon; access rights were granted to a few of our favorite fourteeners. Much of this is due to the efforts of our former conservation director Clare Bastable. In July, Clare left the CMC to take a position with a conservation foundation

(she’ll actually be able to give out money now rather than ask for it!). I would like to personally thank Clare for her advocacy, passion, and contagious smile that she shared with the club these past eight years.

Conservation has always been front and center in the club’s rich history; Clare has left after some wonderful successes that we are all able to enjoy.

Have fun out there.

Katie Blackett Chief Executive Officer

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28 Canyon Country Gem Always overshadowed, often dismissed, Dinosaur National Monument finally gets some love. But not for its bones.

By Ted Alvarez EXTRA: Can't get to Dinosaur? These canyon-laden destinations are almost as overshadowed, but just as sparkling.

20 The Big Bang

34 Borrowing From Our Children

The Colorado Mountain Club knows its mountains; always has. The founders of 1912 knew and loved a special swath of Rocky Mountain landscape and were determined to protect it, for eternity. What they did was help create Rocky Mountain National Park.

Saving is believing. The CMC started with a bang, but didn't stop there. Learn about the club's other incredible achievements in conservation.

By Chris Case

By Gerald Caplan EXTRA: How'd those mountains get those interesting names?

Revisit a 1914 pack trip through the park with those who knew best, the Arapaho who grew up there.

Fall 2009 Trail & Timberline • Issue 1004 • www.cmc.org

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Departments 01 Letter from the CEO 05 Inbox 06 On the Outside 10 Mission Accomplishments

Learn the latest from the Conservation and Education Departments, as well as the Mountaineering Museum.

14 The Clinic

Heading out for a long day on the trail? Don't forget your lunch box.

By Chris Case

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16 Pathfinder

Colorado only turns golden once a year. We asked well-traveled photographer Todd Caudle where we might capture the golden light.

By Todd Caudle

40 From the Archives

On the Cover

A group gathers on Tyndall Glacier during the club's Second Annual Outing in 1913.

Many hikes and climbs were taken in the Estes Park area to explore the possibilities for a national park.

George Harvey, Jr.

A lost relic from Cheesman Park, commissioned and constructed by the CMC, turns up in the elevator room. You never know where you might find treasure.

By Chris Case

41 End of the Trail

Remembering Cleve Armstrong

42 CMC Adventure Travel

Want to get away? Join classic CMC trips to Nepal, Vietnam, the Grand Canyon, and more.

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Editor’s Note Making the call

W

ouldn’t it be wonderful if we could create national parks and designate wilderness with a single phone call? Or establish access to a peak with a simple email?

A new biography of the 26th President of the United States, Theodore Roosevelt, focuses on his accomplishments in conservation and reconfirms the idea that Teddy acted as fast: hours after leaving Yosemite on a John Muir-led excursion, he had contacted his Interior secretary and ordered protection for a larger swath of California's great redwood groves.

This isn’t 1909. In that year, the last of his presidency, Roosevelt had already protected some 230 million acres of America's wildlands—five times more than all previous presidents combined.

In 2009, the country hasn’t gotten any less beautiful, or unique, nor has it lost its need for protection. No, there is no Teddy to pick up the telephone and make a park, but there are thousands of members of clubs like ours who can do the equivalent. Since the founders of the Colorado Mountain Club put down on paper their aim to protect our forests and flora, mountains and alpine attractions, club members have been making the call, so to speak. Colorado is filled with exquisite examples of natural wonder and wildness, and we have set aside our share.

Rocky Mountain National Park. Check. Dinosaur National Monument. Check. Florissant Fossil Beds National Monument. Check. Hundreds of thousands of acres of Wilderness. Check. Access to majestic vistas, priceless experiences and beloved backcountry. Check.

There’s no denying that conservation has become a political issue. It is now a matter of intricate balance, steeped in the complexities of human kind, engulfed by issues and agendas. But it needn’t be. “In wildness is the preservation of the world,” as Thoreau wrote.

As members of this club, we have joined an organization that is as devoted to helping us get into the mountains as it is to helping us keep those mountains pristine. Often, that means legally protecting them and not just using them.

Yes, there have been countless defeats and compromises throughout the short history of the conservation movement. Economy over ecology. Business before wilderness.

But if wildness be our sustenance, let us eat before it spoils.

“We will never have the whole loaf…,” as Wallace Stegner once wrote. “But the half loaf is still possible, and we had better take it.”

Chris Case editor@cmc.org

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Trail & timberline

The official publication of the Colorado Mountain Club since 1918.

Editor, Director of Photo & Design Chris Case Assistant Editor Doug Skiba Advertising Sales Robin Commons

advertising@cmc.org

The Colorado Mountain Club 710 10th Street, Suite 200 Golden, Colorado 80401

The CMC is a 501 (c)(3) charitable organization.

www.cmc.org The Colorado Mountain Club is organized to ▶ unite the energy, interest, and knowledge of the students, explorers, and lovers of the mountains of Colorado; ▶ collect and disseminate information regarding the Rocky Mountains on behalf of science, literature, art, and recreation; ▶ stimulate public interest in our mountain areas; ▶ encourage the preservation of forests, flowers, fauna, and natural scenery; and ▶ render readily accessible the alpine attractions of this region.

© 2009 Colorado Mountain Club

All Rights Reserved

Trail & Timberline (ISSN 0041-0756) is published quarterly by the Colorado Mountain Club located at 710 10th Street, Suite 200, Golden, Colorado 80401. Periodicals postage paid at Golden, Colorado, and additional offices. Subscriptions are $20 per year; single copies are $5. POSTMASTER: Please send address changes to Trail & Timberline, 710 10th Street, Suite 200, Golden, Colorado 80401. Advertisements in Trail & Timberline do not constitute an endorsement by the Colorado Mountain Club.

Please recycle this magazine.

Printed on 10% post-consumer waste recycled paper.

Ed Viesturs

Inbox Outbox We want to hear from you. Send your letters to Trail & Timberline, Colorado Mountain Club, 710 10th Street, # 200, Golden, Colorado 80401 (attn: Letters to the Editor) or email us at letters@cmc.org. Please include your name, mailing address, email address, and phone number.

Published letters may be edited for length and clarity.

Trail & Timberline makes it to the tippity top! American Mountaineering Museum Director Jake Norton shows off issue #1001 on the 29,035-foot summit of Mt. Everest on May 19, 2009, at 8 a.m. It was Jake's third successful ascent and the first for Trail & Timberline. Off the left side of the photo is the West Ridge. Cho Oyu’s summit is just behind Jake's head, and Shishapangma is the pyramid-like peak visible in the distance. The snaking glacier on the right is the Rongbuk; where it disappears from view is the approximate site of north-side basecamp.

YOUR MOUNTAINEERING LIBRARY NEEDS THIS BOOK “I

N FALL 2008, the Colorado Mountain Club published a guidebook that was riddled with typos and 70 years out of date, at a time when online competition has put the future of even the most current printed guidebooks in question. And it charged $185 per copy. “‘It sounds crazy,’ Alan Stark, the club’s publisher, said recently as he cracked open a new, hardbound copy of the guide. ‘Obviously, this is not a typical guidebook. It’s a collector’s piece. People will buy it not to use it, but to have it.’

“The book is called The San Juan Mountaineers’ Climber’s Guide to Southwestern Colorado. It was first published in 1933—hand-typed and hard-bound in less than a half-dozen copies. It was the first modern guidebook in Colorado, and with its maps, photos, and route descriptions, it set the template for the hundreds that have followed.

“Climbers have passed around photocopied and stapled versions for The San Juan Mountaineers’ generations, making it an almost mythic book. The club reproduced it Climber’s Guide to Southwestern Colorado exactly, down to the crossed-out letters and handwritten notes in the margins of the typed pages.

L I M I T E D E D I T I O N AVAILABLE EXCLUSIVELY FROM THE COLORADO MOUNTAIN CLUB PRESS “In one sense, the Guide to Southwestern Colorado is a history book.

ORDERS: 303-996-2743 In another, it is still a living guidebook.” —Dave Philipps, The Gazette, Colorado Springs

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On the Outside Summer showers bring August flowers: a hidden, Columbine-coated basin in Rocky Mountain National Park.

Chris Case

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Put One in Your Pack and Go for a Hike

Join the Circle...

By designating either the CMC or the CMC Foundation in your will, you can reduce estate taxes and make a meaningful gift to the club you love.

Help build a legacy.

Join the 21st Century Circle today.

Consult your attorney for bequest language, or call Doug Skiba at 303.996.2752 to join our planned giving circle.

TO ORDER PACK GUIDES See CMC Press Order Form on Last Page

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For Members member benefits → Join us on over 3,000 annual trips, hikes and activities in the state’s premiere mountain-adventure organization. → Expand your knowledge and learn new skills with our schools, seminars, and events. → Support our award-winning Youth Education Program for mountain leadership. → Protect Colorado’s wild lands and backcountry recreation experiences. → Enjoy exclusive discounts to the American Mountaineering Museum and Base Camp gift shop. → Travel the world with your friends through CMC Adventure Travel. → Receive a 20% discount on all CMC Press purchases and start your next adventure today. → It pays to be a member. Enjoy discounts of up to 25% from many retailers and corporate partners.

See www.cmc.org/benefits for all the details.

opportunities to get more involved Monthly Giving

Join our select donors who give back to the club every month by using electronic funds transfer (EFT). It is easy and convenient, you can discontinue anytime, and you’ll provide support for critical programs. Sign up at www.cmc.org/support.

Gift and Estate Planning

By naming the Colorado Mountain Club in your will, you will be able to count yourself among the proud members of the 21st Century Circle. Read more at www.cmc.org/legacy. Please consult your financial advisor about gift language.

Volunteer Efforts

If you want to share your time and expertise, give back to the club by volunteering on a variety of projects, from trail restoration to stuffing envelopes. Visit www.cmc.org/volunteer for a complete listing.

Annual Report Available Online

We’re proud of the efficient way we use your donations. Download the PDF at www.cmc.org/AR and read all the details.

Shop and Search

Use www.goodsearch.com and www.goodshop.com to raise money for the club when you designate CMC as your beneficiary.

Contact Us

If you have any questions about donations, please contact Doug Skiba, Development Director, at 303.996.2752 or dougskiba@cmc.org.

Our Membership Services team can answer general questions every weekday at 303.279.3080, or by email at cmcoffice@cmc.org.

The Colorado Mountain Club thanks the Scientific and Cultural Facilities District and its citizens for their continuing support. www.scfd.org

The Colorado Mountain Club is a proud member of Community Shares of Colorado.

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Left: Ed Viesturs; Right: Royal Geographical Society

Mission Accomplishments

The Air Up There

Oxygen now and then at the American Mountaineering Museum

By Jake Norton, Museum Director

The man sitting next to me on the flight from Los Angeles to Denver was curious. His furtive glances suggested he was wondering what happened to the guy next to him, the one with molting skin on his nose and face, sunburned, chapped, with a generally haggard look. That would be me.

Eventually he got up the nerve to ask me where I was coming from, no doubt thinking I might have encountered the recent scourge of H1N1 virus, or something worse. I told him I was returning from a couple months in Nepal; eventually he coaxed out of me that I had been on an Everest expedition, shooting images for Eddie Bauer and their new First Ascent line of climbing clothing.

Almost before those words were out of my mouth, he rapid-fired the standard two questions at me:

Did you summit?

Did you use oxygen?

Yes, I sheepishly replied to both queries.

These weren’t new questions for me. I’d been asked them after each of my six Everest expeditions, and the three others I’ve taken to high Himalayan peaks The first one— Did you summit?—is predictable, understandable, and needs little explanation. In a 10

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society that tends to view success in simple terms, you answer yes or no. I did summit, or I did not. I succeeded, or I failed.

The oxygen issue, however, always seems to need an explanation. Yes, I used oxygen, for such and such a reason. Or, I used it, but only on summit day.

I did indeed bring—and use—oxygen on this expedition, and I have done so on all of my past major mountain expeditions above 8,000 meters. My reason for using oxygen has always been the same: when I’m on the high peaks, I’m invariably working, being paid not only to climb, but also to create images along the way. Not using oxygen would be, simply put, irresponsible.

Like many, however, I’ve always wondered how I might fare on Everest without a bottle in my pack and a mask on my face, simply breathing the cold, crisp, rarified air and plugging away toward the top. But, whenever that thought arises, I am always reminded of my friend Robert Link who quipped after being asked why he used oxygen on Everest: “Hey, I can drive my car without oil…it just doesn’t run as well or last as long.”

Indeed, bringing supplemental oxy-

gen into the mountains to assist climbing has sparked debate and dissent since A. L. Mumm, Tom Longstaff, and Charles Bruce carted canisters on their climb of the Himalayan Trisul in 1907. Mingled with arguments about ethics, performance enhancement, even style, there are few things which inspire so much debate in the climbing community.

As our flight across the western states continued, my seatmate peppered me with more questions:

Did the oxygen help? How much do the tanks weigh? Is it weird wearing a mask? How does the system work? Is it like Scuba?

These are questions which many people—perhaps even you—have wondered about. Starting in November 2009, we will have the answers to these questions, and more, in the upcoming exhibit on oxygen use. ▲

Bottles, old and new.

Panel discussions. Altitude information. Everything about oxygen at extreme altitude except the headache.

Visit www.mountaineeringmuseum.org for more infromation.

Almost Wilderness

Roadless Areas are more than just roadless

By Bryan Martin, Director of Conservation

For nearly 40 years, so-called roadless areas have received a great deal of attention by conservation groups, politicians, industry, and the public. But they are more than just areas without roads. These swaths of land, best defined by the 2001 Roadless Area Conservation Rule (the Roadless Rule), are U.S. Forest Service lands providing clean drinking water, large and relatively undisturbed landscapes important to biological diversity, opportunities for dispersed outdoor recreation, and other opportunities

process in 1977 with a second evaluation.

In 1998, upon the direction of President Bill Clinton, the Forest Service initiated the Roadless Area Conservation Rule. The rule set aside approximately 58.5 million acres of National Forest System lands recognized as “roadless” across the country (including 4.4 million acres in Colorado) and also provided new direction on road building efforts and planning processes on Forest Service lands.

By January 2001, the Roadless Rule was finalized and adopted by the Clinton admin-

▲ Huntsman Ridge is part of the Hayes Creek Roadless Area, northeast of McClure Pass. Part of a complex of six contiguous roadless areas, it has been dubbed the “forgotten wilderness” as the largest unprotected area in the state at 122,ooo acres. Aron Ralston that diminish as open space and natural settings are developed elsewhere. They were also recognized as important reference areas for study and research. In many ways, they can be thought of as lands waiting in the bullpen for more protective Wilderness designation.

But their history is fairly grey. The definition and recognition of these areas began in 1971 when President Nixon initiated the Roadless Area Review and Evaluation process. After surveying and inventorying millions of acres of lands, the attempt eventually failed to protect any land (dismissed because of violations to the formal review and evaluation process). President Carter continued the

istration prior to the expiration of his term in office. While the administration’s move appeared to be an eleventh hour “land grab”— and played as such in the media—the effort had really begun in the 1970s.

Since 2001, the Roadless Rule has been a flash point of controversy for countless constituencies, from local to national and international. Interested parties have taken to the courts, the legislature, and the press to affect the policy in a myriad of directions.

The massive effort on both sides of the debate has largely resulted in stalemate—with only temporary protections for roadless lands in place today.

Often, hikers, campers and climbers do not even know they are in a Roadless Area— few signs mark their boundaries. Moreover, the general public fails to recognize that so much of their drinking water is derived from sources within their boundaries. Along Colorado’s Front Range, lands near the recognizable place names of Mount Evans, James Peak, Cache la Poudre, and Pikes Peak boast tens of thousands of acres of roadless lands.

On the Western Slope and in the central mountains, swaths of roadless land can be found near East Vail, the Flattops, Mount Elbert, and the Maroon Bells.

Today, the fate of these and hundreds of Colorado’s roadless areas are being decided through a state-specific planning process.

Why? In May 2005, while conservation organizations and industry were battling over the 2001 Roadless Rule in the courts, the Bush administration replaced it with the State Petitions Rule. This rule required governors to petition the U.S. Department of Agriculture to protect Roadless Areas in their states. One by one, state governors could initiate a public process individually tailored to each state’s interests. The process is managed by the Forest Service and governed by the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) with the intent to determine how Roadless Areas are to be managed in each state. Colorado (at that time under the administration of Bill Owens) and Idaho took advantage of the petition process. New Governor Bill Ritter kept the petition in place upon his arrival to office. At present, Idaho is the only state to complete a state-specific Roadless Rule; a rule specific to Colorado is pending the completion of an Environmental Impact Statement and is currently out for public comment until October 1st.

Colorado’s inventoried Roadless Areas represent some of the last great pieces of public land in our state. In its present condition, the rule falls short of adequately protecting our roadless areas. The CMC looks forward to working with Governor Ritter, the Department of Natural Resources and the U.S. Forest Service to craft a rule with protections for roadless lands as strong as those provided in the 2001 Roadless Rule. ▲ For more information on the Colorado Roadless Rule and how to get involved please visit www.cmc.org/roadless.

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For She’s a Jolly Good Fellow

The CMC Foundation awards its academic grants for 2009

By Al Ossinger, Colorado Mountain Club Foundation

Since 1982, the Colorado Mountain Club Foundation has awarded fellowships for research in the natural sciences, following our mission of 1912.

This year’s recipient of the Neal B. Kindig Fellowship is Carissa Aoki, a Ph.D. student under Dr. Bill Romme, in the Department of Forest, Rangeland and Watershed Stewardship at Colorado State University. Her research investigates “Fire Regime and Vegetation Change in a Mixed-conifer Forest of Southwestern Colorado: A Reconstruction from Paleo-ecological Evidence.” Ms. Aoki is a graduate of Yale University.

Recipient of the Kurt Gerstle Fellowship, Janice Brahney is a doctoral student under Dr. Jason Neff, in the Department of Geological Sciences of the University of Colorado at Boulder. Her research investigates “Dust Deposition in Alpine Lakes of Colorado.” Ms. Brahney holds bachelor’s and master’s degrees from the University of Colorado. She has conducted research in British Columbia and the Yukon Territory.

Other grant recipients include: Rebecca Harris, a doctoral candidate at the University of Colorado at Boulder for her research on the “Effects of Pine Bark Beetle-induced Tree Mortality on the Spread of Invasive Species”; Jared Heath, of Colorado State University, for his research on the “Assessment of the Influence of Motorized Winter Recreation on Sub-nivean Space”; and Heather M. McIntyre, of the University of Colorado at Boulder, for her research “Utilizing Satellite Remote Sensing Data Over Complex Terrain to Monitor Climate Change Parameters.”

The review committee consisted of Thomas Cope, Kent Groninger, Sam Guyton and chairperson Al Ossinger.

Carissa Aoki (top); Janice Brahney (bottom)

Blaurock Award to Toll

FORT COLLINS!

David Hite

The 2008 Carl Blaurock Silver Piton Award, bestowed upon a CMC member who “has invested a substantial amount of personal time and effort in CMC activities, resulting in a significant improvement to the organization” has been presented to Giles Toll.

Front, L to R: John Radloff, Rainie Toll, Harrison Toll, Ellie Toll, May Toll, Caroline Toll, and Sian Hauver. Back, L to R: Susan Toll, Mattie Toll, Giles Toll, Connie Hauver, Darwin Toll, Chris Toll, and Jane Toll.

A retired physician, Giles completed the Colorado fourteeners long ago. He has led CMC hiking, climbing, and cross-country ski trips over a span of many years. Giles served 18 years on the Board of the CMC Foundation, including two terms as President. He chaired and served on innumerable CMC committees, and remains available whenever help is needed. Giles’ father and uncle were among the small group that founded the Colorado Mountain Club in 1912. Mt. Toll, in the Indian Peaks Wilderness, is named after his uncle, an early superintendent of Rocky Mountain National Park.

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TO ORDER

See CMC Press Order Form on Last Page

The Backcountry Bash has a long and storied history as the annual fundraising event of the Backcountry Snowsports Alliance (BSA). Now, after the union of the BSA and the Colorado Mountain Club, the 17th Annual Bash continues as our marquee winter event, and a celebration of the state’s premier mountain-adventure organization dedicated to recreation, conservation, and education.

th

17 l a Annu

Keeping the tradition alive!

Backcountry Bash November 14, 2009

American Mountaineering Center

Golden

www.cmc.org/bash

$30

Dine at Watercourse Foods

Benefit the Colorado Mountain Club

Monday, October 19 from 7 a.m. to 9 p.m.

On Monday, October 19, Watercourse Foods will donate a portion of its proceeds to benefit the CMC. Come show your support by having breakfast, lunch or dinner with family, friends, and co-workers. Watercourse Foods is happy to accommodate large parties, so make sure to bring everyone you know. And don’t forget to order dessert.

www.watercoursefoods.com 837 E. 17th Ave, Denver

To learn more about Watercourse Foods and their commitment to environmental sustainability, or to view the menu, go to watercoursefoods.com.

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The Clinic Eating Your Way to the Top Nutrition on the Trail

By Chris Case

T

he saying goes, “You are what you eat.” But, perhaps it should be, “You should eat for what you are.” Are you a hiker? Are you a track sprinter?

Especially when it comes to athletics—including hiking up that fourteener on the weekend, or hiking the Colorado Trail all week—your performance, enjoyment, and safety all depend on how well you fuel your body. Your meals should match your actions.

Though elite endurance athletes—cyclists, runners and the like—might often be seen using gels, bars, or drinks made for performance, that isn’t all that they eat. The basis for great performance is real food—whole, quality food in its purest form. But it’s hard to eat a savory chicken breast, a robust salad, even a turkey sandwich when you’re on a bike for five hours. Then, the calorie-rich composition of a PowerBar or a bottle of Cytomax may be essential. The same may be true for you, the hiker.

If you know what bonking is, you probably have some idea of how food relates to function—and, in turn, happiness—out in the field. Just like that 5-hour ride, a 10-hour hike demands something of our bodies and our stomachs. But there are some crucial differences, too. When it comes to good nutrition—whether on the bike or on the slopes of Longs Peak—it’s all about a Boy Scout essential.

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“It’s like building a good fire,” says Kathleen Farrell, registered dietician at the Boulder Center for Sports Medicine. And there are different types of fire for different settings: sometimes you need a bonfire, but more often you’ll want a slow-burning campfire.

“You can think of the kindling as your simple carbohydrates—good sources for burning fast. Your complex carbohydrates have fiber and they burn a bit longer. Think of your logs as your proteins and fats. They help maintain healthy blood glucose levels and sustain energy.” As intensity increases, the ratio of kindling to logs will change. A cyclist on a 2- or 4-hour ride will want more simple carbohydrates. When the activity is low intensity, like hiking, there can be more of the complex carbohydrates, fats, and proteins.

“Training logs,” or just writing down what you do on a hike or trip, “will allow you to find out what you’re taking in and

Do It Yourself Natural Performance Foods

Keeping foods in their purest form ensures high levels of phytochemicals (chemical compounds such as beta-carotene that occur naturally in plants), antioxidants, enzymes and trace minerals. Here are a few recipes that you can try at home before your next hike.

how your performances go,” says Farrell. If it works, stick to it. If it doesn’t, you’ll need to change things up. You’ll need to learn what your gastrointestinal tract can handle, to see how your body is responding to different foods.

“Watch out for foods high in fats because you’re putting a large log into the fire and it’s hard to digest. Fiber is just as bad because it’s hard to digest,” says Farrell. With all that blood necessary for digestion, you could be seeing stars well before nightfall.

Coupled with the effects of altitude, dizziness can become downright hazardous.

Like performance-based athletes who need easily digested foods rich in calories, gels, bars, and sports drinks are a great option. And, because of their caloric density, they are ultimately less bulky to carry. But, there is a right way to use them.

“Always dilute them with 4 to 8 ounces of water,” says Farrell. “Don’t mix them with sports drinks; otherwise you are getting too much of a load. The combination of gels and sports drinks is hydroscopic—it has the tendency to pull water out of the system.

Sports drinks by themselves are great if you can tolerate them because they contain sodium, which actually leads to more drinking which is useful during activity. Of course, hydration every fifteen minutes is crucial and is essential for enjoying the hike.”

For those who don’t like gels and bars, the alternative is simple: real foods like peanut butter and honey; fruit, of course; dehydrated foods like raisins are lighter and denser in calories. “Real foods always supply what we need,” says Farrell. “But, it’s nice to have a drink that takes care of 400 calories just like that, especially if you’re trying to consume 4,000 or 5,000 calories a day. Still, supplements can lead to you going overboard: if two is good, three is better. That’s not a good mindset. It’s all about knowing what your body can handle during activity.”

And knowing how to build the right fire. ▲

Energy Bars 1/2 cup flour 1/4 cup soy flour 1/4 cup ground flaxseed 2 cups all natural granola 1 teaspoon cinnamon* 1 teaspoon vanilla extract 3/4 cup dried fruit*

1/2 cup honey 1/4 cup brown sugar 1/3 cup applesauce* 1/4 cup walnut/other oil 1/2 teaspoon sea salt 2 eggs

Preheat oven to 325°F. Grease a 9” x 12” pan. Combine all dry ingredients thoroughly. In another bowl combine all of the moist ingredients thoroughly. Combine the two bowls and spread into pan. Bake for 30 minutes. Cool and cut into 16 squares. *You can replace the cinnamon, applesauce, and dried fruit with 1/3 cup peanut butter, and 1 cup mini-chocolate chips; if you do, then reduce oil to 1 tablespoon.

Nutrition values per bar: 190 calories, 34g carbohydrate, 1.5g fiber, 4g protein, 4g fat, 98mg sodium, 98mg potassium Super Carbo Bars 3 cups rolled oats 3 cups granola 2 cups brown rice flour 3/4 teaspoon sea salt

3 cups apple juice 1 lb silk or medium tofu, drained 1/4 cup honey or maple syrup*

Preheat oven to 400°F. Lightly coat a 10” x 12” pan with vegetable oil of your choice. Mix the ingredients well. Spread evenly into pan. Bake for 30 minutes. Let cool, cut into 16 squares and freeze. *maple syrup = 190mg potassium Nutrition values per bar: 205 calories, 44g carbohydrate, 4g fiber, 7g protein, 2.3g fat, 110mg sodium, 190mg potassium Sweet Potato Chips 2 medium sweet potatoes 1 teaspoon sugar

2 teaspoons canola/vegetable oil 1/2 teaspoon cinnamon

Preheat oven to 400°F. Boil large pan of water. Coat baking sheet with non-stick spray. Slice potatoes 1/4” thick and par-boil. Drain well. Brush oil onto slices and sprinkle with sugar and cinnamon. Place on baking sheet in single layer and bake for 20 minutes. Turn over and bake until slightly crisp for about 5 minutes. Cool and serve.

Classic Corn Dodgers This old-fashioned cross between pancakes and corn bread is best enjoyed while backpacking with views of alpine meadows. Don't forget the honey.

Before the trip, mix the dry ingredients together: 1 cup white flour 1 cup yellow corn meal 3 teaspoons baking powder 1/2 teaspoon salt 1 tablespoon sugar 1/2 cup powdered milk Put the dry mixture in a quart-size ziplock bag. When ready to cook, heat one tablespoon of cooking oil in the bottom of a pan. Add straight into the dry ingredients and mix well in the bag: 3 eggs 1 tablespoon cooking oil 1 1/2 cups water Cut one corner off the bag and squeeze about 1/4 cup of batter into the pan.

Cook until one side is golden and then flip. Serve with honey or syrup.

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Pathfinder

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Story by Todd Caudle. Photography by Todd Caudle and Dave Showalter.

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Golden Colorado Finding color to fit a photographer’s eye

It sounded so simple. Write a short article extolling the virtues of my favorite fall-color hikes in Colorado. No problem.

As a professional landscape photographer, the odometer in my truck spins like the numbers on a Cripple Creek slot machine as I explore as many of Colorado’s nooks and crannies as I can. I hike countless miles of glorious mountain trail in search of that fleeting light after a storm, or an extraordinary display of alpine wildflowers. I could tell you just how far I hike in any given year, if only I could write-off my hiking mileage. Could it be at all difficult to come up with a few of my favorite fall-color hikes?

Yes, as a matter of fact, it could. You see, of the 30,000 miles I put on my truck each year, many of them are put there between mid-September and mid-October. This all-too-brief window is my most photographically productive time, as I’m out chasing the changing color from one corner of the state to another. Shooting a quiet aspen forest below Independence Pass in the early morning, then shooting the majesty of Wilson Peak in the San Juans later that same day is not conducive to the contemplation of the zen-like beauty of a forest trail.

Let’s step back a second: What is it about fall colors in Colorado that make an already beautiful scene ever more so? Unlike New England’s kaleidoscopic variety of color, we mostly get one.

But it’s a good one. Walk among a stand of aspens at peak color on a sunny day, as golden light surrounds you, and you’ll swear you’re walking within the sun itself. Listen as the wind blows through the forest, and the aspens will quickly tell you how they got their unofficial name: quakies. Most important, however, is what we have that our friends back East don’t—the Rocky Mountains. It’s simply hard to beat the image of shimmering golden aspen below a glorious snow-capped peak, topped off with an impossibly blue sky.

Beyond that, aspens are an interesting species of plant. Entire mountainsides of aspens are often one single organism, all intertwined below ground, all dependent on the overall health of the forest to survive. It’s even been said that the single largest living organism on Earth is an aspen stand somewhere in Colorado.

I know this, because I once heard John Travolta say it in a movie.

[Incidentally, it is a stand in Utah, named Pando, that holds the title of largest living organism by mass or volume, covering 106 acres and weighing an estimated 6,000 tons. – Eds.]

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Crater Lake Classic Is there a more classic Colorado scene than that of the majestic Maroon Bells reflected in Maroon Lake? This is just the starting point of an easy hike to Crater Lake, from where you’ll be able to crane your neck to see the Bells up-close and personal as they rise just beyond the shoreline. The trail initially meanders along the shore of Maroon Lake before entering the aspens and taking a more uphill tack. Shortly, you’ll hike alongside an enormous waterfall surrounded by aspens, and then you’ll briefly clear the trees as the trail picks its way through a talus field.

Before getting to Crater Lake, you’ll re-enter the aspen forest for your final jaunt to the lake.

More adventuresome travelers can add to their journey with a few choices: turning right at the trail junction just before reaching the lake brings hikers up the steep trail to Buckskin Pass, along which the fall colors continue unabated for quite some distance; continuing straight beyond Crater Lake brings you to West Maroon Pass.

OUT YOU GO Crater Lake Trail, Maroon Bells-Snowmass Wilderness Start Maroon Lake (9,580 feet) End Crater Lake (10,076 feet) Mileage 1.65 miles Elevation gain 600 feet Tips ▶ It’s hard to beat the view of the Maroon Bells jutting up over a majestic stand of aspen trees, but as you walk the trail to and from Crater Lake, don’t forget to look down to notice some of the colorful understory. ▶ Make the drive from Aspen to the Maroon Lake parking lot for free before 8:30 a.m. After that, you’ll be required to ride the shuttle bus from Aspen Highlands for a fee.

Previous Page: Mists tickle the ridges of Colorado's highest peak, Mt. Elbert, drenched in fall color. Todd Caudle. ▶ Canopy and understory alike light up on the Crater Lake Trail near the Maroon Bells. Todd Caudle.

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▲ Hallet Peak rises above golden aspen in Rocky Mountain National Park. Late September is prime time for fall color in Colorado's Rockies. Dave Showalter.

Autumn High On late-September weekdays, once the throngs of peak-baggers have returned to the flatlands, it’s possible to experience nearsolitude on a Colorado fourteener—even the state’s highest. The South Mount Elbert trail meanders through a stunning forest of tall, white-barked aspen trees on the eastern slopes of the mountain. Beaver ponds near Corske Creek reflect the show. It’s also likely that you’ll be treated to some conspicuous and rare stands of red aspen near here.

As the trail climbs the eastern rib of Mount Elbert, aspens give way to spruce and fir forests. Don’t worry—the fall spectacular isn’t over yet. Climb past treeline and enjoy the ruddy golden brown of the tundra, flecked with fiery red accents, distant memories of summer’s showy wildflower display. The higher you go, the more expansive the views become. From here you’ll marvel at the vast expanses of unbroken aspen forests draped across the landscape as far as the eye can see. Once on the summit, enjoy the 360-degree panorama of distant fall colors, from the Mosquito Range to the east, to the Elk Mountains to the west. You’ll see the familiar profile of the Maroon Bells piercing the sky as a blue-gray shadow to the

west, and know that there, too, are some of Colorado’s most beautiful autumn scenes, to be explored another day.

OUT YOU GO Mount Elbert, Sawatch Range Start South Mount Elbert trailhead (9,600 feet) Turnaround point Mount Elbert summit (14,433 feet) Mileage 11.5 miles, round-trip Elevation gain 4,800 feet Tips ▶ With a 4WD vehicle, you can trim 4 miles round-trip and 800 feet of elevation gain. However, this part of the hike is through some of the most spectacular aspen forests in Colorado. If you’ve got the stamina for the entire trip, consider parking at the paved trailhead. ▶ One of the best parts of climbing in the fall is the reduced likelihood of getting caught in a thunderstorm. However, diminished chance does not mean zero chance. It’s always a good idea to get an early start and to keep an eye on the sky.

Colorful Colorado In putting together this list of fall color hikes, I decided that I needed back-up. For that I turned to Dave Showalter, photographer and author of “Prairie Thunder—The Nature of Colorado’s Great Plains,” winner of the Colorado Book Award. Together, we came up with a few more options for hiking among autumn’s splendor. ▶ Buffalo Peaks loop, near Fairplay: Circumnavigate the namesake peaks of the Buffalo Peaks Wilderness Area and travel through a mix of aspen and pine forest, with numerous beaver ponds along the way. ▶ Bierstadt Moraine, Rocky Mountain National Park: The trail to Bierstadt Lake traverses the moraine, which is covered with aspen. Rising in the distance are peaks of the Continental Divide. ▶ Conundrum Creek, Maroon BellsSnowmass Wilderness: This hike, through lush aspen forests, can end with a soak in some of Colorado’s premier backcountry hot spring pools. Be forewarned: clothing is optional. ▶ Dark Canyon Trail, Ruby Range, near Crested Butte: Start at Horse Ranch Park along the Kebler Pass Road and climb high enough for a distant view of imposing Dark Canyon, with nothing but an unending array of fall colors separating you from the canyon several miles distant.

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The Founders of the CMC and the Establishment of Rocky Mountain National Park

By Gerald Caplan

The Big Bang

“It might well be considered the first great achievement of the Colorado Mountain Club.” – Morrison Shafroth

R

ocky Mountain National Park— the epitome of the Coloradan landscape—was the state’s second, the nation’s tenth, and remains one of the most famous and monumental of America’s national parks. Incidentally, its establishment in 1915 was inextricably linked to the 25 people who founded a small, pioneering club for exploring the mountains in 1912—it became known as the Colorado Mountain Club.

Who were these visionaries and how did they achieve such early success?

Accomplished, enthusiastic and energetic, they envisioned a club with volunteers who would lead hikes and climbs for the membership as well as educate the public about the mountains with lectures and slide shows. They also wanted to conserve wild lands in Colorado and made establishing this national park one of their early objectives. Nothing like starting small.

Among these charter members was James Grafton Rogers, the club’s first president. A graduate of Yale and the University of Denver Law School, he became Dean of both the University of Colorado and University of Denver Law Schools. Rogers wrote books about the history and natural science of the Rockies as well as popular songs. He served as Assistant Secretary of State in the Administration of Herbert Hoover and was in charge of negotiating the treaty between Canada and the U.S. for the development of the St. Lawrence Seaway. During World War II, he was deputy director of the Office of Strategic Services, precursor of the CIA. After the war he participated in a commission to supervise elections in Greece that would

determine whether Greece would have a democratic or communist government. As well as being president of the CMC, he was president of the American Alpine Club. After “retirement,” he settled in Georgetown and became mayor of the town. At the end of his life, he was working on an index to all of the mountain passes in Colorado.

Another founding member was Roger Wolcott Toll, a graduate of Columbia who was Superintendent of Rocky Mountain National Park from 1921 to 1929. During his tenure, he built an extensive system of trails, laid out the construction of Trail Ridge Road, added the Never Summer Range to the park’s holdings, and introduced the ethic of leaving wildflowers in their place. Tragically, Roger Toll was killed in a head-on collision in New Mexico while driving home from Great Bend National Park. In his honor, Paiute Horn was renamed Mt. Toll.

Enos Abijah Mills was a mountain guide and miner who traveled extensively across the United States, including the frontier of Alaska. In 1902, Mills bought the Longs Peak Inn which became a mecca for climbers.

In 1903, he became a snow observer for the State of Colorado and trekked many miles on snowshoes reporting on forests and wildlife.

This self-educated man became an avid environmentalist and published 16 books. He was the first to climb Longs Peak in winter and he climbed the mountain 297 times.

Mills was also tireless in his efforts to promote the establishment of a national park near Estes Park. Described by Horace Albright, future Director of the National Park Service, as “a nasty little mosquito waiting to draw blood,” Mills could be unforgiving when people disagreed with him.

But he was persistent and proselytized the ◀ The Charter of 1912. "We Citizens of virtues of creating the park to thousands of Colorado here present organize ourpeople in America through his magazine arselves as the Colorado Mountain Club..." ticles and books. Historian Carl Abbott eloThe rest is history. quently summarized the complexities of this ▶ The Official Endorsement by the club. lone naturalist:

The greatest accomplishments of Enos Mills came when he was alone. He was a patient and sensitive observer whose understanding of the Colorado wilderness deepened throughout his life, and he had the ability to interpret his knowledge in clear and forthright prose that still conveys his sense of delight. At the same time, the long years of solitary living and selfreliance that made him an effective nature writer may also have limited his emotional maturity. When he faced the need to deal with other people as equals or to work with orga-

nizations, personal doubts interacted with an adamant reliance on his own expertise. The result was bluster, which destroyed his effectiveness and thereby confirmed his worst suspicions about his associates. In his career as a pubic advocate he was a tragic figure, a man who had achieved much as a writer and as a spokes-

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Chris Case (2)

Rocky Mountain National Park

Then

& Now

Almost one hundred years. Almost nothing has changed.

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2009 Total wilderness acreage: 249,339 Elk: The elk population in the park fluctuates dramatically from summer to winter.

As many as 3,200 elk gather in summer, but that number dwindles to 1,000 during winter as elk migrate to lower elevations and move to areas outside the park.

Total visitors: 2,929,750 (2008)

1915 All historic images from the CMC Collection

First acting supervisor: C. R. Trowbridge, a native of New York who had distinguished himself primarily as a military man. He was told to "run" the Park on a budget of $10,000 a year.

First ranger: R. T. ("Dixie") MacCracken, a 22-year-old structural engineer from Washington, D.C. (The ranger's salary was $900 a year, or roughly $2.50 a day. Out of this sum, MacCracken not only supported himself but also two horses and a Ford car.

Elk: In 1913 and 1914, the Estes Valley Improvement Association and U.S. Forest Service transplanted 49 elk from Yellowstone National Park to the area.

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▲ A formal dedication ceremony was held on September 4, 1915 in Horseshoe Park. CMC Collection. man for Colorado, but also a man who undermined the broader influence on the conservation policy, which he so greatly desired.

The other charter members of the club are as interesting as Rogers, Toll and Mills, but less well known. Mary Sabin was the first to sign the charter; her signature was followed by those of several women—Lucretia Vaile, Frances Rogers, Rose Lee Smith, Ethel Fraser and Ruth Rogers. All were active hikers and climbers.

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Sabin, as the club’s first secretary, was one of the early organizers of club activities. After graduation from Smith College in Northampton, Mass., she was offered an assistantship in astronomy, but turned it down to return to Denver to help her sister, Florence, get an education. Mary began a successful career as a mathematics teacher while her sister, also a CMC member, graduated from Johns Hopkins University with a medical degree and became the first woman at Hopkins with the rank of full professor.

Dr. Ethel Fraser practiced medicine in Denver and served as Denver’s City Physician from 1912-1915. During World War I, she went abroad with a group of female American doctors to serve in the French Army; the United States had refused their offer. She loved the mountains and enjoyed collecting mountaineering books which she eventually donated to the CMC library.

Thirteenth to sign the charter was George Cooper Barnard, CMC president between 1919 and 1920. He led the first five

CMC state outings and, for the proposed Rocky Mountain National Park, interviewed locals, pored over maps, and handled a transit on mountaintops to help delineate the boundaries. When he was delighted with the scenery from mountaintops he was known to cry out the Cohuila Indians’ war chant he ne terratoma, ne terratoma! Today, both a lake and a mountain echo his sense of joy: Terra Toma Lake and Terra Tomah Peak.

Charles Partridge Adams was the 15th to sign the charter. Before helping to found

the club, Adams was a landscape artist.

Stimulated by a three-month camping trip in Colorado, he began painting landscapes, and by 1890 his work was accepted in the National Academy of Design. After 1905, he and his wife summered in Estes Park where he worked out of a studio he called “the sketch box.” He painted dramatic mountain scenes, his style becoming more impressionistic with time. His activity as a charter member was during a very productive time in his career, and his output even-

tually numbered over 3,000 paintings.

Our National Park In 1912, there was abundant open space in Colorado, but little sense of conservation; few people thought that we should save land or wildlife. Against strong opposition from water, timber, mining, cattle, and other interests, concerned CMC members wrote newspaper articles, led tours, conducted lantern (slide) shows, and gave lectures to educate the public about the proposed Rocky Trail & Timberline

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Mountain National Park. Enos Mills alone wrote 2,000 letters, 64 newspaper and magazine articles, and gave 42 lectures.

To outline future park boundaries, CMC members hiked throughout the unmarked wilderness. R.B. Marshall, chief topographer for the USGS, said there were too many unnamed mountains in the area and, until they were named, he wouldn’t print topographic maps. To solve this problem, the CMC appointed Harriet Vaille to

To the government committee charged with deciding the fate of the park, the irascible Mills made a stirring plea. Congressmen and senators emphasized the economic value of the park to the state and region.

The committee was deluged with excerpts from noted authors on the beauty of the landscape. The Fourth Earl of Dunraven, a British writer and aristocrat with ties to the Estes Park area, rhapsodically expressed the tumult of the terrain in one of these letters:

the higher summits, while beneath the land is glowing under a cloudless sky.

head a nomenclature committee that would use names the Indians had given the peaks.

Vaille and her friend Edna Hendrie traveled, partly by wagon, to the Wind River Reservation in Wyoming to recruit Arapahos for this task. Three Arapahos, Gus Griswold, 73, Sherman Sage, 63, and Tom Crispin, 38 (their interpreter) returned with them to Estes Park. With Oliver Toll, Roger Toll’s brother, and Shep Husted as guide, the five men, but not the women, camped for two weeks, naming future park areas like Never Summer Range and Lumpy Ridge, using over 36 Indian names [See page 27].

The whole region is one vast brewery of storms.

Chemical changes are constantly going on. Electricity is working with exceptional vigor, riving the solid rocks, devastating trees, and putting forth most vividly the awful and mysterious manifestations of its strength. Hot currents and cold currents fight aerial battles round those patient peaks, that stand unmoved amidst the roar and racket of elemental strife…Tempests shriek round the crags and moan dismally as they toss the gnarled and matted branches of the stunted trees that force their adventurous way up the broad shoulders of the range. Snow in winter, rain and hail in summer, pour upon

the images helped win them over. On January 26, 1915, the bill to establish the park, originally drafted by James Grafton Rogers, was signed by President Woodrow Wilson.

At the 50th anniversary of the park, Superintendent Granville Liles commented, “There would have been no Park if it had not been for the efforts of the Colorado Mountain Club.” ▲

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Attorney Morrison Shafroth, CMC President in 1914, led the final effort to persuade Congress to adopt the bill establishing the park. He traveled to Washington, D.C., with Frank W. Byerly, a CMC member and photographer. Byerly presented hand-colored, stereoptical photographs of the rugged land to the congressional committee, and

Gerald Caplan is a past president of the Colorado Mountain Club and the Colorado Mountain Club Foundation.

Placing Names

Remembering a1914 pack trip

F

orty-eight years after he and other members of the Colorado Mountain Club had arranged a two-week pack trip with three Arapaho Indians through the Estes Park-Grand Lake region of Colorado, Oliver Toll was persuaded to publish his original notes from 1914. It seems that their value had finally been realized. The published work came to be known as Arapaho Names and Trails.

Now, ninety-five years after the pack trip, it is remarkable to look back upon the trip as a whole: the impetus, its social dynamic, the terrain, and the cultural and geographic value. To think it was an official endeavor of the club, organized by the socalled Nomenclature Committee, makes it all the more interesting.

On July 14, 1914, three Indians who had lived in the Estes Park area as children arrived in Longmont by train from the Wind River Reservation in Wyoming: Tom Crispin, a 38-year-old Indian interpreter of partly white blood, “carried his suitcase with an air of considerable sophistication”; Sherman Sage, 63, wore his blue cloth Chief-ofPolice uniform, with a roll of blankets under his arm; and Gun Griswold, at 73 the oldest of the visiting party, “was fanning himself embarrassedly with some eagles’ feathers, his share of the luggage.”

The party left Longmont for Estes Park, in the automobiles of Mr. C. F. Hendrie and Mr. F. O. Vaille, and arrived at Longs Peak Inn where, with the help of Enos Mills, plans were made for the trip. The party, assisted by local outfitter Shep Husted, achieved their goal of crossing as much of the region as possible, especially in the high country, traversing what is now Rocky Mountain National Park, to Grand Lake and back again.

In all, Toll was able to match many Indian names with local names, for natural features and trails alike; learn something of and devise a pronunciation guide for the Arapaho language; and gather, through numerous campfire discussions, some of the customs, legends, dances and songs of the Arapaho.

The words and perspective of Oliver Toll cannot be improved upon. The following is an excerpt from his book, compiled in 1962, though written at the time of the trip in 1914. In detailing the three Indians, we might be able to appreciate the scope and value of their trip.

Gun Griswold was the oldest of the Indians, seventy-three years old. He found it a hard trip.

He rode in the saddle with the ease and poise of a sack of oats, and about the middle of the trip developed a sore back, so that we made the traveling as easy as possible for him. As Tom said, the people at the reservation would be apt to blame us if Griswold never came back. As we were coming back over the Flat Top Trail, which is pretty hard going, Griswold got discouraged, got off his horse and sat down on a rock, telling us to go ahead, but that he was an old man, it was too hard a trip for him, and he wanted to be left right there. It was a very natural feeling but not a very practical one. This, by the way, was the only instance on the trip of anything approaching bad humor on the part of the Indians. They were ideal camping companions, jolly and good natured.

Griswold has been a judge among the Arapahos under United States law which was translated into the Arapaho language. Now he is retired on a moderate allowance, taken out in rations, I believe. No one could help respecting him. He spoke little, had a great deal of dignity, and was treated with consideration by the others. They said that his only son had been killed a few months ago by another Indian, which accounted for Griswold’s lack of spirits.

Sherman Sage, sixty-three years old, was a much more active man, and as jolly as Griswold was quiet. He had been in innumerable Indian battles in his day, a wound on his right hand testifying to his part in the battle of Clear Creek.

At present he occupies the office of Chief-ofPolice on the Reservation. This is perhaps the most important Indian office there, though the

chief activity of the police department is the arrest of Indians who get drunk. (It is against the law to sell Indians liquor.) Sage was evidently a good man for his position, responsible, brave, and cool. He impressed one as particularly trustworthy and honest. Added to this, he was a pretty shrewd old Indian, and a good judge of people...

When Sage used to live near Denver, fifty years ago, the most substantial building was an adobe house on the lower part of the Cherry Creek. Sage’s recollections of Denver was a number of houses standing on sand spits in the creek bottom, resting on posts which kept them several feet above the sand...

Tom Crispin, the interpreter, was about thirty-eight years old. He is the official Interpreter for the Arapahos on the Wind River Reservation in Wyoming, and interprets very well, as he speaks both good and colloquial English, and is intelligent and accurate. His point of view is entirely that of the whiteman. He has met every president since Arthur [Chester Arthur, the 21st U.S. President – Eds.], has a daughter who is ready to enter college, and a son, Tom, Jr., whom he calls Buster, so you can see that he is quite up to date. His Indian name is White Horse, and he belongs to a family that is one of the seven leading ones among his tribe. He has considerable property on the reservation. On the trip, Tom considered himself one of us rather than one of the Indians. He would say, for instance, ‘You couldn’t lose these Indians in these woods; they could find their way home from anywhere you could put them, while you or I might easily get lost.’ Tom slept in our tent, the two older Indians having a tent by themselves.

▲ On the left is Shep Husted. "The indians called him 'Sage-Brush Dude.'" Next to Husted is Gun Griswold, "dignified patriarch." Sherman Sage wears the important uniform of Chief-of-Police. Next is Tom Crispin. On the right is Oliver Toll, "The Tall one", a cousin of Harriet Vaille. Seated is a summer visitor to Estes Park.

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Canyon Country Gem

Colorado’s Dinosaur National Monument

By Ted Alvarez

â–˛ The Gates of Lodore, Dinosaur National Monument Airphoto/Jim Wark 28

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s a youngster, Dinosaur National Monument held a special place in my heart: It was the place where all the plastic-toy and storybook dinosaurs that infested my youth would come to life in an epic jumble of rock and bone. But I grew past that somehow, and my days filled with the usual suspects: comic books, rock 'n’ roll, girls.

As I became an adult, Dinosaur should’ve moved back on the radar. The outdoors commanded my attention, and the famous red canyonlands of Utah remained high on my must-see list. I had some vague idea that Dinosaur National Monument contained canyons as well, but how could it possibly match the alien shapes of Arches, or the vast depths of Canyonlands? And it was so out of the way; like tons of people, I discounted it and kept trundling with the rest of the I-70 pack towards Moab.

But, I’m happy to say, I’ve been making a huge mistake: Dinosaur National Monument houses some of the best canyons on the continent, a best-kept secret preserved simply by being off the beaten path. On its trails, sheer, brick-colored rock walls often groan hundreds of feet above you on either side, and even if you yell your loudest, you’ll be the only one to hear the cascading echo.

From intimate desert washes festooned with pictographs, to sweeping white sandstone vistas, Dinosaur deserves to be mentioned in the same breath as its famous Utah cousins.

But you won’t hear me saying it—I’d much rather keep it to myself.

Distant Dinosaur Tucked away against the forgotten, barren border of northwestern Colorado and eastern Utah, Dinosaur National Monument doesn’t command much outside attention.

Visiting from the Front Range requires an almost six-hour push on remote highways, and once you near the park, asphalt simply vanishes from the map. Sections of the park that might only be 10 miles apart sometimes require multi-hour circumnavigation.

People who do visit often choose to confine themselves to rafting trips on the Green River or gape at the admittedly impressive dinosaur bones on display in the visitor center (The famous Quarry Visitor Center, which houses a cliff face teeming with jumbled dinosaur bones, has been closed since 2006 because of structural instability. With $13.1 million in federal stimulus funds, the park hopes to reopen the Quarry in 2011).

But if you tackle Dinosaur on foot,

you’re in for a treat. Hikers will encounter quiet miles of desert paradise in the secondlargest land-based national monument. In addition to avoiding some of the crowds and attention that flood more famous canyon parks of Utah, visitors will discover an arid playground practically overflowing with that rarest of desert commodities: water.

Gates of Lodore The 210,844 acres of canyonland near Dinosaur, Colo., and Vernal, Utah, were first declared a national monument in 1915, albeit as a much tinier 80-acre parcel of land around the quarry. But the true beginning of the park far predates that: 150 million years ago, during the Jurassic period, a massive flood washed piles and piles of prehistoric animal bones into a riverbed, where they were preserved under layers of thick sediment. When the Uinta Mountains of Utah were formed just to the west, tectonic forces lifted and tilted this riverbed, and erosion exposed a cliff face littered with dinosaur bones. Scientists have been chipping away at this paleontological goldmine for nearly a century, producing amazingly complete fossil skeletons of several Jurassic species, including the charismatic carnivore Allosaurus.

These exposed prehistoric monsters became the park’s number-one draw, evidenced by the giant plaster dinosaurs that litter the gateway towns of Dinosaur, Ver-

year-old layers of red quartzite from the preCambrian period.

The approach is all yellow sand and dusty green scrub, but the Gates of Lodore rise abruptly, a red gash in the drab earth that rises 1,000 feet above the lazy Green.

Those high vertical walls practically advertise adventure, and would fit perfectly as an opening scene in a newer, better Indiana Jones film that sadly didn’t get made.

A short nature trail leads hikers to a higher vantage point filled with sunning lizards, and we got a better view of the canyon within those walls. But beyond that vantage point, the river runs flush against the cliff face, and as such remains the strict province of river runners. By the time the sun rose above the cliff walls, three or four guided and private parties had already started preparing their rafts for the famous put-in near the Gates of Lodore.

Jones Hole Trail My hiking companion and I didn’t feel like swimming through Class III-V rapids, so we decamped for the Jones Hole Trail, which began on the northern edge of the park in Utah. The trail begins inauspiciously in a parking lot at the Jones Hole Fish Hatchery, a 45-mile drive from the temporary visitor center across the border from Colorado.

This explains all the fish: Jones Hole Creek, a cold-spring fed stream, is positively

I’m happy to say, I’ve been making a huge mistake: Dinosaur National Monument houses some of the best canyons on the continent, a bestkept secret preserved simply by being off the beaten path. nal, and Jensen, Utah. But lucky for us, early park boosters also recognized the beauty and importance of the surrounding canyons and desert, and they expanded the monument in 1938 to include it.

Even though I grew up, like many, a childhood dinosaur addict, I wanted to escape the fossil-mad rabble and get to wilder areas of the park. I began at the Gates of Lodore, which marks where the Green River begins to carve the canyons of Dinosaur.

Fittingly, the geology of the gates predates the dinosaurs: The Green slices into billion-

overflowing with rainbow, brown, and cutthroat trout, as well as Kokanee salmon. The staff is warm and welcoming, and they’re happy to give you a tour of their fish reintroduction facilities. But we skipped it, because just beyond that parking lot, we saw the real prize: orange sandstone cliffs studded with piñon, leading deep into Dinosaur.

Most years, Dinosaur National Monument doesn’t get more than 8 inches of precipitation, which keeps it comfortably within the 10-inch annual limit to officially qualify as a desert. But hiking down the Jones Hole Trail & Timberline

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Trail, that’s easy to forget: Lush grasses and burdock spill over into the dirt path, and dense groves of cottonwoods and box elder form a cooling canopy. The impossibly clear Jones Creek burbles alongside the trail, and juvenile trout dart into the shadows as you pass. All the water and greenery makes this place feel more like a botanical garden than a dinosaur-bone-filled sand pit.

Our destination was the Ely Creek Campground, where a scant two backcountry sites waited only two miles into the park, right alongside the confluence of the two creeks. Here, the promise of waterfalls, swimming holes, abundant wildlife, and an Abbey-like desert solitude beckoned.

A few local fly fishers waded in the first 1,000 feet or so, taking advantage of the nodoubt spectacular fishing. They dwindled and the cliffs grew taller as we marched inward, but not much more than a mile in, we encountered spectacular pictographs and petroglyphs lining an entire section of canyon wall, just above eye-level. Some petroglyphs in Dinosaur date back to the Paleoindians of the 1,300-year-old Fremont culture.

Intricate patterns and clear drawings of elk and even big-shouldered humans were rendered against white sandstone outcroppings in bright, rusty ink, looking fresh and new.

The pictographs were so close and so vivid that it was easy to feel as if you’d discovered them yourself. Even stranger, I could somehow relate to the primal motivations that drove them to draw the essentials—food, water, family, dreams—on the walls of their canyon home. Dinosaur National Monument is filled with moments like this, moments where time ceases to exist and the line between prehistory and present-day blurs.

A bit more mellow hiking and we’d already reached our campsite, with fresh legs but scorching skin under a midday sun. We quickly dashed up the connecting Island Park Trail, which deposited us at a small waterfall that poured into a broad, white sandstone bowl that resembled an oversized birdbath. After frightening a garter snake into the grass, we sat under the waterfall, refreshed by the pounding cold.

So far, we had enjoyed solitude beyond the fly fishermen, but we saw an older, dusty man in sunglasses round the bend, followed by another, and then another. Before long, we had lost our private waterfall to a crowded river trip. (They did, however, show us a technique where you can sit in the channel of the falls above, blocking it momentarily before allowing it to cascade in one big dump.)

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We were worried that our solitude had been ruined, but it was premature; after a few hours, the river trip moved back down the Jones Hole Trail to their rafts on the Green River. We had the entire Jones Hole Creek to ourselves again, and we ventured down another two miles to the big Green itself, where the rafting parties had left and the river churned gently, undisturbed.

Mindful of the current, we couldn’t resist taking another swim in the frigid shallows near the bank.

The Green is big: a real River with a capital ‘R.’ Fed by Wyoming’s Wind Rivers, it eventually fills the Colorado with a significant bulk of its water. To bask in this glacial melt in the middle of the desert is to be humbled by the scale of the world, to experience the connection between vastly different ecosystems. Not to mention fun: Swimming against the current and searching for warm spots in the cold flow of the green while the sun sets isn’t a bad way to spend an evening.

We let the air dry us off as we hiked back up the Jones Hole Trail to home base at Ely Creek. That night, we camped alone.

No one took the other site—except prairie dogs and marmots, who constantly peered into our tents while we gazed up at an arm of the Milky Way framed by the canyon.

Dinosaurs vs. The Desert On our way out of the park, I wondered if I hadn’t missed out on a lot of front-country attractions by going for the backcountry trip. The big-money draw in Dinosaur National Monument, after all, is the dinosaurs, and I’d mostly opted out in hopes of enjoying solitary desert without having to drive deep into Utah or Arizona.

But then I thought back to our quick stop at the Visitor’s Center in Jensen on our way into the park. A square-jawed ranger with a toothy smile explained that Jones Hole remained his favorite hike. While he told us about the opportunities to see wildlife, and the clarity of the water, I remember kids running all over, exhilarated to be surrounded by a bronze Allosaurus claw, or the full-size stegosaurus replica inexplicably painted like a dairy cow. To these kids, this small piece of Dinosaur National Monument must’ve seemed like the be-all-end-all.

It was then that I realized my be-allend-all happened the night before. For our dinner of rice with mushrooms and chorizo, we ditched camp and hauled our cooking gear partway up the Island Park trail. We scrambled past the waterfall, up until we

reached sandstone domes that arched upwards like an empty swimming pool. We scrambled higher, tiptoeing past cryptobiotic soil and edging along a small cliff face until we were atop a ridge in the middle of a vast amphitheatre. Hoodoos dotted the ridge, and on one side bare, white sandstone walls and bowls broke off into branching canyons, while on the other, red-and-white layers of sedimentary rock piled up like layers of a crumbling cake.

Just as the rice finished cooking, the sun set, bathing our amphitheater in pink. We’d have to scramble down in the dark. Perfect. ▲ Ted Alvarez is Assistant Online Editor at Backpacker Magazine.

â–˛ Colorado National Monument ripples on the western edge of the Massive Colorado Plateau.

Airphoto/Jim Wark â–ź Independence Monument looms large above the surrounding red rock, just outside of Fruita.

Chris Case

Colorado's Other Canyon Lands

If Dinosaur doesn't quite fit your bill, check out these other canyon hotspots in the Rocky Mountain state.

All the Drama, Easy to Access Colorado National Monumentent "You get the essence of wilderness with easier access than Dinosaur," says Michelle Wheatley, chief of Visitor Services. "It's quite dramatic, and there's something for everyone along the canyon rims."

Wheatley recommends the Monument Canyon hike, a 6-mile path that takes visitors into the heart of Colorado National Monument. You'll walk among the 400-foot-tall walls of the park's premier red rock monoliths like Independence Monument, Kissing Couple, Pipe Organ, and Grandview Spires.

Best time to visit Fall, which brings cooler temperatures and abundant opportunities to see desert bighorns.

For a deeper backcountry experience An undeveloped route through the remote No Thoroughfare Canyon offers steep terrain on a spotty, 8.5-mile-long trail. Rewards for your perseverance include solitude amid 400-foot-high sandstone walls.

More Info www.nps.gov/colm

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Archaeological Wonder Mesa Verde National Park Ever fantasized about stumbling onto a long-forgotten civilization? If so, it's hard to beat Mesa Verde: This national park in Southwestern Colorado boasts some of the largest and best preserved cliff dwellings in the United States. Around 600 A.D., Anasazi Indians constructed elaborate sandstone houses, towers and Kivas (underground ceremonial rooms) and occupied them for more than 700 years.

Visitors should get tickets ($3) for a ranger-guided tour of either Spruce Tree House, Long House, or Balcony House, where you'll learn about the cultural and anthropological history of the region in intimate detail. Hikers with time and strong legs should also spring for the Prater Ridge Trail, a nearly 8-mile trek

that climbs the edge of a mesa and showcases dramatic changes in elevation, vegetation, and climate.

Interesting fact While ancestral Puebloans lived in the Mesa Verde region for over 700 years, they didn’t get the great idea to build their famous cliff dwellings until the last 100. Until then, they dwelled on top of the surrounding mesas.

More Info www.nps.gov/meve

▲ The intriguing interior of a Mesa Verde Kiva. ▶ Sunset bathes the park's cliff dwellings in golden light. Chris Case (2) New Kid on the Block Dominguez Canyon Wilderness Area President Obama just gave Dominguez Canyon Wilderness Area designation this year, but that probably won't spoil anything. This littleknown canyon zone sees only a handful of visitors a year, which is fine, because you'll have piñon-juniper mesas, abundant wildlife, and multiple rivers all to yourself.

Dominguez also offers a variety-pack bonus: With elevations ranging from 4,800 to 9,000 feet, you can travel from craggy sandstone canyons to alpine zones full of aspens all in one day. Hike one mile beyond the confluence of Big and Little Dominguez Creeks to find an impressive waterfall and boulders laden with petroglyphs.

In addition to becoming an official Wilderness Area, Obama also included the region in the larger Dominguez-Escalante National Conservation Area. According to Erin Curtis, public affairs specialist with the BLM’s Grand Junction office, they will seek public input as they develop official conservation and management plans over the next few years. They plan to form a public advisory council within the next few months that will help guide future plans for the park. For information on joining the council, look for updates at http://www. blm.gov/co/st/en/fo/denca.html.

More Info www.blm.gov/co/st/en/fo/gjfo/recreation/wsa/dominguezwsa.html

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"The Colorado Mountain Club is exerting every possible effort to bring about the creation by Congress of a National Park in that wonderful territory lying along the Continental Divide..." Such emphasis was placed on helping establish Rocky Mountain National Park that the club took its second annual outing to Estes Park, "with a desire to acquaint our members with the extraordinary possibilities of this region as a National Playground..." From the Second Annual Outing brochure, CMC Collection.

Borrowing from our Children How the CMC helped establish more than just Rocky Mountain National Park

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P

rotecting Colorado’s wild lands—and the indelible experiences that can only be had within them— has been a fundamental ambition of the Colorado Mountain Club since its founding in 1912.

The role that members played in the establishment of Rocky Mountain National Park, a mere three years after the club’s birth, is well documented. Of equally grand importance was its role in the park’s designation as Wilderness in 2009.

But there is more to Colorado than that famed slice of Rocky Mountain terrain.

In the past 94 years—between these two monumental achievements—numerous feats of conservation have sprung from the club. Perhaps these other successes haven’t been so easily remembered, or seemed so grand—after all, they didn’t result in the opening or eternal protection of a crown jewel of the National Park System. But, they are part of an incredible catalog of triumphs that collectively and continuously fulfill the club’s call to preservation, protection, and access.

The Last Frontier…of Colorado

By Chris Case Steve Bonowski, Anya Byers, andJan Robertson contributed to the research of this article.

In 1915, after theft and vandalism plagued paleontologist Earl Douglass’ efforts to excavate a quarry in the northwestern portion of Colorado, the professor finally petitioned for the quarry to be protected as a national monument. He was successful: President Woodrow Wilson so proclaimed the 80 acres comprising the quarry area on October 4, 1915, as Dinosaur National Monument.

In the 1930s, the club set out to learn more about this remote canyon country.

First aroused in 1933 by CMC President Garrat B. Van Wagenen, interest steadily grew in exploring the region. Subsequently, efforts increased in protecting a greatly expanded area beyond those original 80 acres.

More than half a dozen articles about the great canyons of the Green and Yampa Rivers appeared in the pages of Trail & Timberline between 1934 and 1937, reflecting the numerous trips that were taken to the canyons. In 1934, members Van Wagenen, Edmund B. Rogers, and Robert Niedrach took a flight over the landscape, with Niedrach making “a number of still and moving pictures” (Trail &Timberline, #205, November 1935). Rogers was able, in a few moments of flight, to observe the general topography and scope of a landscape which a few

months before he had tirelessly studied in detail during a two-week pack trip on behalf of the National Park Service.

“There is something artificial, something almost unnatural about the entrance to Lodore,” wrote Rogers, referring to the plunging gateway of Lodore Canyon, a crumbling, upturned canyon cut of the Green River. “Within sight of it, it fascinates and holds one’s attention. [John Wesley] Powell records the depressing effect it had on his party. There is something almost sinister about it.”

In 1936, under the leadership of Richard Morris, the CMC set out to officially explore what they were calling “the last frontier of Colorado”—to bring back tangible evidence of the existence of archaeological remains, confirm the romantic stories of the area’s early history, and capture a photographic impression of the beauty of the region. A survey of the frontier—dubbed The Canyon of Lodore-Yampa River Reconnaisance of 1936—was born, and revealed the club’s giddiness for pioneering exploration.

“Two-thousand-foot vertical canyon walls…a wild, raging river hemmed in by solid rock…a river doubling back within 200 feet of itself…pictographs…pre-historic cliff dwellings…the home of notorious bad Trail & Timberline

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August 25, 1916 National Park Service Organic Act (which created the NPS) January 26, 1915 Rocky Mountain National Park designated

June 29, 1906 Mesa Verde National Park designated (Colorado’s first and the seventh in the United States)

1936 CMC organizes Canyon of LodoreYampa River Reconnaissance trips

October 4, 1915 Dinosaur National Monument designated

1934 CMC reconnaissance flight over Dinosaur National Monument 1938 Dinosaur National Monument enlarged to 204,000 acres

▼ The map of the proposed national monument, prepared by the National Park Service in 1935.

men…unexplored…unmapped…uninhabited… the last frontier of Colorado….”

The effort that members put towards exploring, surveying, and promoting such special country amounted to a grand en36

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dorsement for its protection. And, in 1938, Dinosaur National Monument was enlarged to 204,000 acres, including the scenic canyons of the Green and Yampa rivers which members had proposed.

The Birth of Environmentalism

Ironically, after a lull in its efforts, it was an issue facing Dinosaur that brought conservation back to the forefront of the club’s attention.

“There was no compelling conservation issue until 1954,” says Jan Robertson, a longtime member of the club and conservation devotee.

That year, the Bureau of Reclamation proposed the construction of two dams within the heart of the monument— one at Split Mountain and one at Echo Park where the Green and Yampa Rivers join. “And then the Colorado Mountain Club blew it.”

Though the majority of members who were surveyed opposed the construction of the dams, the board chose not to take a stand. Fortunately, the Colorado Springs and Boulder groups of the club circumvented the state board’s decision and, alongside The Wilderness Society and the newly formed Sierra Club, were able to prevent the dams from being built.

Beyond the controversy that arose within the CMC, the conservation victory was bittersweet: The Colorado River Storage Act was still passed in March 1956, and created several other large dams,

January 1, 1970 National Environmental Policy Act enacted

August 1966 CMC calls for protection of Florissant Fossil Beds against housing development

1981 CMC hires Anne Vickery, first paid conservation staff

September 3, 1964 Wilderness Act passed

1956 Colorado River Water Project Act enacted

1962 Roger Fuehrer attends the Sierra Club convention

August 20, 1969 Florissant Fossil Beds National Monument designated

March 30, 2009 Rocky Mountain National Park Wilderness designated

October 2, 1968 National Wild and Scenic Rivers Act

▼ The 1930s saw more than a dozen articles, trip reports, and endorsements for the establishment of Dinosaur National Monument.

including Glen Canyon (which created Lake Powell), Flaming Gorge, Navajo, and Curecanti (the Wayne Aspinall Units on the Gunnison River). Nevertheless, the national publicity surrounding the dams of Dinosaur resulted in a national concern that no public lands were safe from development, and helped motivate later conservation-minded land management policies such as the Wilderness Act and the Wild and Scenic Rivers Act.

A Coordinated Surge The feeble efforts of the club’s conservation work in the 1950s were reversed in 1961. Dick Guadagno reinstituted the conservation committee and, soon after, a college student, Roger Fuehrer, led the club into the age of environmentalism. For many reasons—politics, polemics, and principles—the 1960s saw a national surge in concern for conservation, mirrored within the CMC.

Undeniably, the initial effort was small. After a request for $100 in funding was refused by the CMC Board, Fuehrer was secretly given money by a sympathetic board member, allowing him to ride the train to San Francisco and attend the Sierra Club biennial Wilderness Convention of 1961. The convention proved to be a crushing blow, but an inspiring one. Fuehrer was largely ignored by environmentalists who felt powerless against Colorado’s anti-environmentalist and pro-dam U.S. Representative, Wayne Aspinall. David Brower, the first executive director of the Sierra Club, said that the environmental movement in the 1950s and 1960s had seen “dream after dream dashed on the stony continents of Wayne Aspinall.” Fuehrer returned, however, determined to get something done from within the club: find an issue, form a committee, and wrap it in a philosophy that confirmed their principles.

The Conservation Committee that formed—a powerful assemblage of Hugh Kingery (author), Dick Lamm (who would later become Governor of Colorado), Estella Leopold (daughter of ecologist Aldo Leopold), Amy Roosevelt (niece of Eleanor Roosevelt), and six others—started and succeeded with a local issue: banning billboards. But they quickly moved on to a national issue: creation of the National Wilderness Preservation System.

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Working from the apartment Fuehrer shared with three other members, the committee was able to persuade many people to testify at the Denver hearings on the Wilderness Act, landmark legislation that established wilderness as the highest form of protection for federal public lands. As Fuehrer noted in a 1982 article in Trail & Timberline (#759), Congress actually adjourned for two days while the Congressmen in Denver heard three days of testimony— two days longer than originally scheduled.

Successes continued in this age of environmentalism.

Later that decade, under the direction of Estella Leopold, the club’s fervent conservation ethic led it to spearhead the protection of what many were realizing was “one of the world’s outstanding natural museums of prehistoric plant and animal life.” In August 1966, an article appeared in Trail & Timberline (#572) that detailed the great fossils and petrified remains of the Florissant lake shales, and called for members to contact their congressmen to support the establishment of Florissant Fossil Beds National Monument.

When housing developments began to spring up within the proposed protected area, a CMC trip was organized to detail the encroachment. Subsequent studies by the trip members led to reports being sent to the National Park Service, with recommendations for boundary changes.

Leopold and fellow CMC member Beatrice Willard led the cause to protect the land—and its wealth of paleontological discoveries—by forming a group they called Defenders of Florissant.

Supported by the innovative tactics of the group’s lawyers who se-

“A true conservationist is a man who knows that the world is not given by his fathers, but borrowed from his children.”

John James Audubon cured an injunction, this sliver of land, shaped by volcanic eruptions some 34 million years ago, avoided being subdivided into thousands of homes.

Instead, on August 20, 1969, the area gained protection as Florissant Fossil Beds National Monument.

For Forest, Flower, and Fauna But, the field of conservation was soon to change. Not only were environmental causes gaining national attention and stirring national passions, but the cause for environmental action was becoming highly complex. The passage of the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) on January 1, 1970, created a requirement that environmental policy be considered through federal agency decision making, and that the public be given the chance to review 38

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▲ In September 1966, the club asked for support of its proposed boundary changes to Florissant Fossil Beds National Monument, shown in this map that accompanied the article. environmental assessments and impact statements. Essentially, protecting the environment became even more a game for experts—and those who could handle mounds of paperwork.

It is unfair not to list the many other accomplishments that have come from the club’s devotion to “the preservation of forests, flowers, fauna, and natural scenery” on which it was founded. The historical menu includes a multitude of wilderness designations, land-use protection, access negotiations, conservation and recreation balancing acts, and smaller, but collectively no less significant feats. In looking at the club’s particular successes in protecting Rocky Mountain National Park, Dinosaur National Monument, and Florissant Fossil Beds National Monument, it becomes clear that the CMC’s conservation visionaries were wise enough to know that the world is borrowed from our children.

Colorado will never again see the likes of a grand landscape like that of Rocky Mountain National Park protected in perpetuity. Large, unfragmented landscapes no longer exist and, further, conservation is a highly regulated beast today. Still, the passion with which members make the call to preserve Colorado’s remaining wild lands may never change. Enos Mills and many others, including the founding members of the CMC, had a devotion for what would become Colorado’s most famous park; John Muir, Theodore Roosevelt and countless others had it for what would become Yosemite National Park. And, fortunately, the CMC still has it for the last of Colorado’s wild places. ▲ For more information about the CMC’s Conservation Department, visit www.cmc.org/conservation.

Roadless Lands

www.cmc.org/roadless

Paul Stewart Happy 90th Birthday September 4, 2009 Member since 1954 Editor, Trail & Timberline, 1977-78 Chairman of El Pueblo group, 1965 â—€ Paul Stewart, Glen Canyon, Spring 1960

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From the Archives Dialing for Mountains

By Chris Case

In recent years, if you ever had the chance to peek your head into the elevator room at the American Mountaineering Center, you’d find tucked behind some miscellaneous pieces of lumber and push carts, a relic of the Colorado Mountain Club, from the days of its infancy. The large cast-bronze, half-moon object wasn’t easy to move, or easy to decipher at first glance.

But it was once a cherished item on display for all of Denver—residents and tourists alike—to use, and in plain view in Cheesman Park.

The Denver Republican “has been urging for some time—the setting up of a series of pointers at observation points by which visitors would be able to pick out the several peaks and learn the name of each,” read an editorial from 1912.

What they got—according to an article in the Denver Times on April 16, 1913, days after the installation was complete—was a mountain index that members “familiar with the system of directories used for similar purposes in Switzerland and California [considered] certainly the most elaborate and one of the finest in the world.”

Consisting of a bronze plate upon which this map was then etched, the index indicated nearly 40 prominent mountains (some as far as 130 miles away) and detailed the angle at which they sat from

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the pavilion in the park. It also indicated each peak’s elevation and its distance from that point. A peephole sight on the dial directed the viewer’s eye towards a given peak.

Excitement for the index had already begun a year earlier, when the map was published in newspapers. As civic pride often will, the city attraction led to a bit of boastfulness. “It is pen proof of the clearness of the Colorado atmosphere, for probably in no other place on earth can one see 130 miles,” read the Denver Times on August 5, 1912.

The geographical work of the map for the index was done by Professor Ellsworth Bethel of East Denver High School, and James Grafton Rogers, the club’s first president. The mechanical work was done in the “optical workshop” of Paul Weiss, also a member of the club.

Don’t worry—we’ve moved it out of the elevator room. ▲

End of the Trail Ray Langston

Cleve Armstrong 1942-2009

COLORADO SCRAMBLES!

TO ORDER See CMC Press Order Form on Last Page

Always an Adventure

By Karon Young

▲ Cleve and Ray Langston skied off the north side of the world's highest peak, Mount Everest.

It is with great difficulty and sadness that I write this for Cleve Armstrong. I had anticipated another summer of climbing in southwest Colorado: routes were planned, maps organized, and reservations made. But he died June 4, 2009, having lost his battle with pancreatic cancer. I cannot summarize a quarter-century of climbing, running, skiing, traveling and adventure; I am just grateful for the years we shared together.

I started climbing with Cleve in the fall of 1984 when we met on a CMC weekend climb of Mt. Hope. By then, he had already reached the summits of Huascarán and Mt. McKinley, and many peaks in Colorado.

He had also finished the fourteeners; I had not. He thought the best way to introduce me to his way of climbing was to accompany me as I climbed the rest of the fourteeners.

Then, for the next 25 years, we climbed many bicentennials and tricentennials (the 200 and 300 highest peaks in the state).

Climbing with Cleve was always an adventure. Together, we summited mountains in South America, Tibet, Nepal, Mustang,

Australia, Spain, and Russia. He enjoyed every aspect of climbing a mountain and his joy in reaching a summit was infectious. He loved the Colorado mountains the most and was always glad to come home to climb.

He was an active leader in the club, and took much pride in being able to assist those who needed instruction—and showing them how to have fun along the way.

He was a member and instructor for the High Altitude Mountaineering School.

He loved teaching and sharing with others the joy and challenges of climbing, and putting them on summits around the world.

To this end, he was chair of the Expedition Committee, a position he took quite seriously. He began attending meetings barely a month out of surgery last spring.

Though Cleve practiced optometry and was a retired Colonel in the Colorado National Guard, his love of the mountains might have exceeded his devotion to both.

The CMC has lost an active and passionate member; I will miss my husband and climbing partner.

14ers!

TO ORDER, see CMC Press Order Form on Last Page

Trail & Timberline

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CMC Adventure Travel For your benefit and enjoyment, the following trips have been reviewed and approved by the Adventure Travel Committee and are officially sanctioned by the Colorado Mountain Club.

Nepal: Annapurna Sanctuary Trek Sept. 26-Oct. 12, 2009 $2,344 (land cost)

© iStockphoto.com

Visit www.cmc.org/at for more detailed itineraries and registration forms.

Annapurna Sanctuary, a shimmering mountainringed glacial basin in the heart of the Annapurna Himal, is one of the most scenic short treks in Nepal. It offers great cultural and geographical diversity as well as outstanding mountain views.

Part of the appeal of this 11-day trek is that such a huge glacial cirque is reached so quickly—it takes only five days to hike up to it!

Along the way, you’ll pass lowland villages of Gurung and Tamang clans, and cut through thick forests of bamboo, rhododendron, and oak. Continuing on the trek, you’ll walk up and over intricately terraced hills, finally reaching the glaciers and high mountains. Once at the sanctuary, you’ll be surrounded by the highest peaks of the western Annapurna Himal: The 360-degree views are indescribably beautiful, especially at sunset, when the peaks glow with a molten radiance. For more information, please contact Pemba Sherpa at 303-525-6508 or pemba@sherpaascent.com.

org/145.html for a trip report of this tour.

Included in the cost are tents, sleeping bags, bag liners, sleeping pads, cooking gear, meals (all meals from breakfast on day one through lunch on day five), llamas, guide and wrangler service. Hike with just your daypack. Price does not include round trip travel to Boulder, Utah, two night stay in motel, two evening meals, and wrangler tips. For more information, contact Bob Seyse, 303-718-2005 or bobseyse@gmail.com.

Hike with Llamas in Escalante Antone Ridge, Utah

Vietnam: Cultural Experiences and Bicycling

September 21 - 25, 2009 $938

The trip will include five days of hiking in one of the more remote and isolated sections of the Escalante region. There will be a base camp on the west side of Death Hollow, below the summit of Antone Ridge, and each day we will hike in a new direction to explore different parts of the canyon. We will visit side canyons and at least one narrow/slot canyon that will involve some easy canyoneering. One day will be spent on the rim for long-distance views. We will also see several rock art panels and some surface sites left by the Ancestral Puebloans.

This trip will include rough trail hiking, slickrock and river crossings; participants require a B trip classification. See http://lamountaineers.

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February 19 - March 1, 2010 $2200 for 8 travelers ($1960 for 10-11 or $1866 for 12-15) This 11-day trip with Bea Slingsby starts in Hanoi in northern Veitnam. We will spend two days in Ha Long (which translates as “dragon descending”) Bay. The craggy karst limestone towers rise hundreds of feet from the green waters of the bay. We’ll board a comfortable Chinesestyle junk with private facilities for an overnight cruise around 3,000 islands rising steeply from the bay. There will be stops at various grottos and caves and an opportunity to kayak here in this World Heritage site.

Then, from Hanoi we fly to Hue to explore and get ready to cycle. Our route goes south through fishing and agricultural villages, to Hoi

An. Since this leg is 89 miles long, most of us will get picked up part way through by the support van, which will always accompany us. We have a second night in Hoi An as there is much to see and experience. There is also the option for more cycling.

On day seven, we will continue bicycling to Quang Ngai on country roads. Day eight, we will cycle from Tam Quan to Qui Nhon with excellent coastal views. There will be two climbs of about 10% grade, but the van is available. From there, we can ride in the van to Dieu, then cycle a delightful quiet road up a gentle valley and down to Chi Thanh, then finish the leg by driving into the city.

We will spend day 10 in Nha Trang, where you may opt to take a boat trip to surrounding islands, visit a fishing village, and return in Vietnamese round boats. On day 11, we will fly to Ho Chi Minh City (formerly Saigon), then home.

The trip price includes two internal air flights, tips, all meals except two, snacks, bottled water, knowledgeable English-speaking guides, van support, bike mechanic, daily route maps, and a high standard of accommodations in French Colonial hotels or beach-front resorts. Our average daily distance by bicycle is 43 miles, while at a latitude similar to that of the Caribbean Sea.

Not included in the trip are: bicycle rental at a price of $140 (hybrid Trek 7.5 in a wide range of sizes), a single room supplement of $395, airport taxes, visa, alcoholic beverages, and sightseeing expenses other than those specified.

Contact trip leader, Bea Slingsby, for further information and an application at (303) 422-3728, or beahive@comcast.net.

Yellowstone in Winter

Feb. 3 - Feb. 8, 2010 Cost $1020 - $1166 (depending on accommodation level) Steaming geysers, bison, elk, deer, wolves, and other wildlife are all part of the experience of visiting Yellowstone National Park in the winter. Skiers, snowshoers, nature lovers and photographers will enjoy the convenient trails leading directly from the lodge to the geysers and waterfalls. The trip includes round-trip bus and snow coach transportation between

Denver and Yellowstone, a one-night stay in a motel, 3 full days and 4 nights in the Old Faithful area of the park, snow coach drop-off fees, happy hours, and several meals (4 breakfasts, 1 lunch, and 3 buffet dinners). We depart Denver by bus on Wednesday morning, February 3, stay overnight in a motel in Jackson, arriving in Yellowstone on Thursday afternoon. We leave Yellowstone and return to Denver on Monday, February 8, 2010. See website or contact leaders for full details.

Trip Leaders are Polly Hays (303-964-8225 or polly_hays@yahoo.com) and Joan Rossiter (303-695-0389, joan.rossiter@mindspring.com)

Death Valley Hiking

February 28 - March 5, 2010 $998 Snow-capped mountains, sand dunes, castles, abandoned mines, unique wildlife, canyons, layers of multi-colored rocks, and the world’s lowest golf course! Temperatures will be a moderate 65 to 75 degrees.

Springtime is Death Valley National Park’s most colorful time of year. Not only will you hike (several A or moderate B hikes) through the one-of-a-kind terrain that only Death Valley can offer, but you will also visit Scotty’s famous castle, explore the remains of abandoned mines, see unique wildlife, and more. Massage therapy, horseback riding, tennis, golf, and horse-drawn carriage rides are only a few of the many enjoyable options that can be enjoyed during your spare time.

Price includes transportation between the Las Vegas airport and the park, lodging at the newly renovated Furnace Creek Ranch (a complete resort complex in the heart of the park), meals, admission to Scotty’s Castle, and a final group dinner.

For details, please visit www.cmc.org/AT or contact Terry Hardie at tnjhardie@msn.com or Sharon Silva at ssilva@q.com.

Best of the Grand Canyon – Colorado River Raft & Hike

licopter ride from Whitmore Wash and a plane flight back to the start. It is especially ideal for those who would like to hike in areas which can be reached only from the river, and those who have always wanted to experience the canyon but who do not wish to make the seven-mile, 4,500-foot trek on foot.

Our outfitter, Hatch River Expeditions, has been guiding river trips through the canyon for over 70 years. We will have three guides and 20 participants on two 35-foot S-rig boats running fuel-efficient and quiet 4-stroke outboard engines. The average motorized raft trip through the Grand Canyon runs seven days, so this 12 day trip will have plenty of opportunities for hiking. They offer us daily guided hikes at two or three hiking levels, or one may choose to rest in camp. There are several opportunities for point-to-point hikes where we may hike from one drainage to the next and the raft will pick us up later in the day.

The deposit is $300. Please visit www.cmc. org/AT for cancellation policy, payment schedule, and additional information, and to call leaders for availability. Register with leaders Blake Clark or Rosemary Burbank at (303) 871-0379 or blakerosemary@cs.com

Peru: Huayhuash Trek May 29 – June 18, 2010 $1,950

Trek in the rugged and remote Cordillera Huayhuash in northern Peru, starting with a city tour in Lima, and then a bus ride north to Huaraz.

There, we will do a couple of day hikes before starting out on the 14-day loop trek in the stunning Cordillera Huayhuash. This supported trek will take us high into the Andes, skirting peaks over 17,000 feet, visiting high lakes and hiking over passes above 14,000 feet. We will circumnavigate Nevado Yerupaja: At 21,560 feet, it is the world’s second highest tropical mountain.

The trip carries a “C” classification for its high elevation and rugged trails. Not included in the trip cost are airfare to Lima, travel insurance, several meals, guide tips or personal spending money. For more information, contact Janet Farrar at wildjc@juno.com or 303-933-3066.

April 10 - 22, 2010 $4,075 (Limit 18)

Truly a once-in-a-lifetime experience, this unique trip to the Grand Canyon offers participants the opportunity to experience this World Heritage Site on a motorized raft for 188 miles through the best of the canyon. We will depart from the historic Lee's Ferry and end with a he-

trip will start in Lima with a city tour. Then we will fly to Cuzco, sacred city of the Incas, where we will visit the valley towns and attend the Inti Raymi Solstice festival on June 24 at the huge fortress of Saqsaywaman. Then, a five-day supported trek will take us through rainforests up to the Salcantay Umantay pass at 14,763 feet. We will see glaciers and high peaks before arriving at Aguas Calientes, then take the bus up to Machu Picchu. On our second day in Machu Picchu, we will climb the peak behind it, Huayna Picchu, for a bird’s eye view of the famous Inca site.

The trip carries a “C” classification for its high elevation and rugged trails. Not included in the trip cost are airfare to Lima, travel insurance, several meals, guide tips or personal spending money. For more information, contact Janet Farrar at wildjc@juno.com or 303-933-3066.

Russia: Climb Mount Elbrus

August 17-29, 2010 $3,097 (not including airfare to Russia) For the seventh time, the CMC’s High Altitude Mountaineering Section will lead a trip to Russia and the spectacular Caucasus Mountains of southern Russia, between the Black and Caspian Seas. Mount Elbrus (18,510 feet) is one of the fabled Seven Summits and offers strenuous, but not overly difficult, climbing. Required are a basic knowledge of ice axe, crampons and roped travel. The trip will use the standard southern approach from the Baksan Valley and pass the ruins of the famous Priut (Hut), one of 11 that burned in 1998. Extra days are allotted for acclimatization and summit attempts. Transit is through Moscow and will include a daylong city tour at the end of the trip.

The cost of the trip includes domestic airfare within Russia, all lodging and most meals, ground transportation, guide fees in the valley, a Russian visa and permit fees, leader expenses and CMC fee. The final cost may vary slightly depending on airfare and currency exchange issues. For application requirements, please see www.cmc.org/AT.

To obtain the trip itinerary and application, contact Steve Bonowski at nztrekker@ earthlink.net or P.O. Box 280286, Lakewood CO 80228-0286. Trip packet is available only by regular mail. No phone calls please.

Peru: Salcantay Trek June 19 – July 4, 2010 $1,725

Trek the longer, more spectacular approach to Peru’s Machu Picchu on the Salcantay route. The

www.cmc.org/at

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SPRING 2009 ORDER FORM S E N D O R D E R F O R M A N D PAY M E N T T O :

Colorado Mountain Club Press, 710 10th Street, Suite 200, Golden, CO 80401 1-800-633-4417, ext. 103

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FAX 303-279-9690

or order online at cmc.org BILL TO:____________________________________________________

SHIP TO: ___________________________________________________

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PHONE ____________________________ E-MAIL __________________________________________________________________________________

SHIPPING AND HANDLING

CMC MEMBERS: Please fill in your name, address, phone and email, Visa or MasterCard number and expiration date. Total your order, compute the tax at 7.6%, and add shipping and handling. Checks made out to The Colorado Mountain Club for the total are fine, too.

$ 1 – $19.99. . . . . . . . . . . $5.00 $20 – $49.99. . . . . . . . . . . $7.00 $50 – $75.99. . . . . . . . . . . $9.00 $76 – $99.99. . . . . . . . . . $11.00 $100+ . . . . . . . . . . . . . . $12.00

DISCOUNTED BOOK PRICING FOR MEMBERS OF THE COLORADO MOUNTAIN CLUB ___ Best Boulder Hikes, ISBN 978-0-9799663-4-7 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . $10.36 ___ Best Colorado Springs Hikes, ISBN 978-0-9799663-6-1 . . . . . . $10.36 ___ Best Denver Hikes, ISBN 978-0-9799663-5-4 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . $12.76 ___ Best Fort Collins Hikes, ISBN 978-0-9799663-0-9 . . . . . . . . . . . . $11.96 ___ Colorado 14ers, ISBN 978-0-9760525-3-1 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . $9.56 ___ Colorado Lake Hikes, ISBN 978-0-9799663-1-6 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . $19.96 ___ Colorado’s Quiet Winter Trails, ISBN 978-0-9760525-1-7. . . . . . . . . $17.56 ___ Colorado Scrambles, ISBN 0-9760525-0-4 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . $18.36 ___ Colorado Snow Climbs, ISBN 978-0-9760525-9-3 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . $18.36 ___ Colorado Summit Hikes, ISBN 0-9724413-3-6 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . $15.16 ___ Colorado Trail, ISBN 978-0-9760525-2-4 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . $19.96 ___ Colorado Trail Databook, ISBN 978-0-9760525-5-5 . . . . . . . . . . . . . $7.96 ___ Colorado Year Round, ISBN 0-9724413-2-8 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . $15.16 ___ Essential Guide to Black Canyon, ISBN 0-9724413-4-4 . . . . . . . . . $15.96 ___ Essential Guide to Sand Dunes, ISBN 0-9724413-1-X. . . . . . . . . . . $15.96 ___ Flatiron Classics, ISBN 978-0-9799663-2-3 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . $15.16

□ VISA OR □ MASTERCARD

___ Guide to the Colorado Mountains, ISBN 0-9671466-0-7 . . . . . . . . $15.16 ___ Hiking Colorado’s Roadless Trails, ISBN 978-0-9760525-7-9 . . . $10.36 ___ Morpha: A Rain Forest Story, 0-9671466-8-2 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . $11.96 ___ Peaceful Canyon, Golden River, ISBN 0-9671466-5-8 . . . . . . . . . . . $11.96 ___ Playing for Real, ISBN 978-0-9760525-6-2 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . $9.56 ___ Rocks Above the Clouds, ISBN 978-0-9760525-8-6 . . . . . . . . . . $11.96 ___ Rocky Mountain Flora, ISBN 978-0-9760525-4-8 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . $18.36 ___ Roof of the Rockies, ISBN 0-9671466-1-5 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . $13.56 ___ Run the Rockies, ISBN 0-9724413-5-2 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . $14.36 ___ San Juan Mountaineers, ISBN 978-0-9799663-3-0 . . . . . . . . . . . . $185.00 ___ Southern Rockies Vision, ISBN 0-9724413-6-0 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . $15.96 ___ State of the Southern Rockies, ISBN 0-9724413-7-9 . . . . . . . . . . . $15.96 ___ Stettner Way, ISBN 0-9724413-0-1 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . $11.96 ___ Trad Guide to Joshua Tree, ISBN 0-9724413-9-5 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . $17.56 ___ What’s Up with Altitude, ISBN 0-9724413-8-7 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . $10.36

EXPIRATION DATE: ____________

PRETAX TOTAL $__________________

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ADD 7.6% TAX $__________________

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DATE ORDERED __________________

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TOTAL $__________________

There will be

blue skies

tomorrow...

but we still need your help today.

In these tough financial times, our monthly giving program makes it easy to support the CMC beyond your regular membership dues.

Sign up today by visiting www.cmc.org/support, or call Doug Skiba at 303.996.2752 to enroll.

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Weekdays 10 a.m. - 8 p.m.

Weekends 10 a.m. - 6 p.m.

633 South Broadway, Boulder, CO 80305 Table Mesa Shopping Center www.neptunemountaineering.com 303-499-8866 •

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Locally owned for 36 years.

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Trail & Timberline

Gary Neptune CMC member since 1964.