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Learning to forgive

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There’s something I need to get off my chest.

I’ve been holding it inside most of my life, letting it fester, and I hope that bringing it out into the open will help me move past it.

Let the healing begin.

A clean slate.

A new beginning.

It’s time to move on.

I hate California.

Okay, maybe “hate” is too strong. Let’s say I resent California.

Always have.

And let’s say I don’t actually resent the whole of the Golden State. The Bay Area is aces in my book, what with the great food and the streetcars and Alcatraz and bridge-jumpers and such. And Monterey is swell.

Let’s say I resent Southern California generally, Los Angeles specifically, and Malibu bitterly. I’ve lived with this unhealthy resentment since I was a child, and it has in a small way blighted what should have been many happy hours of television viewing, which is ironic because many imperfectly-happy hours of television viewing are what raised that persistent bile in the first place.

In the interest of full disclosure, I’ve been to SoCal, and I liked it. I found the climate agreeable, the scenery exotic, the ocean magnificent, the attractions numerous and gratifying. Disneyland did not disappoint the boy that was I, and teen me couldn’t get enough of SeaWorld. The eucalyptus groves, the piers, the colorful nut-cases and the ever-present glitter of tinsel were sources of fascination and delight. I even loved the beaches – those famous, broad, sun-soaked bikini-clad beaches – which is kind of ironic, since they are in no small part responsible for my lifetime of secret antipathy. But I can state without reservation that I have never blamed the beaches.

I blame Hollywood.

I suppose it all dates back to the surfing craze and movies like Beach Blanket Bingo, Surf’s Up and Gidget. One needn’t know a grommet from a honker to appreciate Sally Field reclining in the sand wearing a form-fitting one-piece, and the idea of cutting loose at a late-night clambake with a bevy of beach-babies could make even the most hydrophobic young hodad lose his water.

In the 80s, blockbusters like the Karate Kid, Valley Girl and Fast Times at Ridgemont High didn’t improve the situation, although by that time, at least in my case, the emotional damage was largely done.

I love the Beach Boys. Always have. Heck, who didn’t? They don’t get much play these days, but I still sing along when “I Get Around” or “Help Me Rhonda” somehow slips past the metal-manic program director at 99.5 The Mountain.  But they were kings, once upon a time, and they presided over a large and imperial court of surfing nobility. Toss in music by the Ventures, the Surfaris and Jan and Dean, and, for a while there, the national soundtrack had a decidedly west-coastal cast.

In my formative years, adolescent viewers were constantly awash in Southern California. All the best TV shows were set in California, from the Brady Bunch to Charlie’s Angels to the Beverly Hillbillies to The Monkees to The A-Team. Even programs not set in SoCal were too obviously filmed there, forcing impressionable young minds to either believe the whole world is an unvarying landscape of dry hills and even drier palm trees, or accept that everything on every screen was a reflection of California culture. Battlestar Galactica? Take Dirk Benedict out of his smart tunic and put him in Karachi sandals and he’s Ricky Nelson in Malibu U.

What’s my point? I’m glad you asked.

Yes, I liked the shows. I liked the movies. I liked the music. But the subtext of it all never varied. California was cooler than whatever backward armpit you had the lousy luck to live in. Californians were smoother, wittier, better looking and better dressed.

Kids in California surfed, and when they weren’t surfing they were riding dirt bikes, and when they weren’t riding dirt bikes they were performing martial arts, or hang-gliding, or combating injustice, or going to teen parties that were so much better than anything you’d ever be invited to that you were effectively doomed to a life of social disappointment. The girls in Los Angeles were cuter, the boys muscle-ier, the food tastier, the sun shinier. The schools were fun. Big fun.

Not like my school.

Before you say it, belay it.

I’m not jealous.

Insecure, maybe, but never jealous. Fact is, even as a pup, I have never aspired to the Malibu scene, or the ostentation of Beverly Hills, or to emulate the bizarre, alien Valley culture. Why would I want to live in California? I grew up in Colorado, and it was pretty awesome. Still is.

As a lad, I lived in constant low-grade frustration, quietly desperate lest the country not understand that the Centennial State is, indeed, cool, and that I, by extension, was just as hip and with it and tuned-in as Tatum O’Neal. Fact is, I could find nothing portrayed in the California-centric media that was in any measurable way superior to my own circumstance.

Maybe I didn’t have an ocean nearby, but I had a lake to boat on if the mood struck me, and a creek to tube in if I just felt like getting wet. I also had snow, and mountains, which equal skiing, which is at least as cool as surfing and, quite frankly, looks better on TV.

I perceived no obvious lack of hipness in my friends. I had buddies that made Jeff Spicoli look like Ralph Macchio, and if I didn’t own a dirt bike, I knew plenty of guys who did. And we didn’t ride around some sissy track. We took our chances in the unforgiving forest primeval. My schoolmates of the female persuasion were of uniform quality and pleasing proportion, such that I could easily, and frequently, imagine them holding their own against Annette Funicello in an all-bikini clambake dance contest.

And yet, for all that, Hollywood never took any notice at all. In return for my generous investments of time and interest and money, the quiet-on-the-set crowd could only rarely be bothered to even recognize Colorado in passing, much less acknowledge that my Rocky Mountain home might possess some small feature of value not to be found on Pacific shores. Like we weren’t good enough. It felt like a snub, and it hurt.

And I resented them for it.

And I resented California.

And, in my heart of hearts, I still do.

Wow.

That felt good.

Yeah, I know it’s stupid. In time I came to understand that everything was filmed in California because that’s where all the cameras were. It just made good economic sense. As I matured I came to realize that Dobie Gillis was no more an accurate representation of American life than Gilligan’s Island, or the A-Team, or any of the other fictionalized, glamorized, dramatized and homogenized nonsense that Hollywood perpetually churns out. I eventually concluded that my real-world peers in California probably looked, lived, laughed and loved pretty much the way I did – excluding Pamela Anderson, of course – and that to measure my existence against the entertainment industry’s illusory yardstick must necessarily kill my spirit by inches.

Knowing helps, but the scars run deep.

I have forgiven the Brat Pack, but I won’t forget the way they made me feel less-than.

Even Ally Sheedy.

And that’s saying something.

Even today I generally avoid shows that are set in Southern California. It’s an almost subconscious aversion, and admittedly unfair. On the other hand, it’s spared me the discomfort of even momentary exposure to steaming twenty-something piles like The OC, Beverly Hills 90210 and the Big Bang Theory.

I guess you could say I’ve grown. I now know that our 31st and most populous state is a fine and proud and admirable place chock full of scenic wonders and cultural delights and scientific marvels and a stout citizenry that likes me just the way I am.

And I resent it.

Always will.

Except now I feel a lot more comfortable with that.

In psychological parlance that’s called a “breakthrough.”

I see our time is up.

Let the healing begin.

Femme fight-ale

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“You missed all the action,” the breathless woman told deputies upon their arrival at a downtown saloon about midnight. “I just got beat up.” It gets better. Seems she was in the bathroom when an anxious blonde berated her for “not moving out of her way fast enough.” The booze-fueled argument spilled into the cantina proper, culminating in a sucker punch to the complainant’s noggin. While several witnesses confirmed that account, her flaxen-haired foe had made herself scarce and nobody was able (or willing) to disclose her identity. In any case, the proud victim seemed well satisfied by telling the story to such an attentive audience, and asked officers to drop the matter. They did.


Fall Preview

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Pavilion Point Trail

Location: Silver Plume

Length: 3.75 miles one way

Altitude gain: 900 feet

Highest point: 10,000 feet

Difficulty: Easy to moderate

Of yore, mighty trainloads of silver-laden argentiferous ores poured down the slopes of Leavenworth Mountain on their way to distant smelters. Savvy prospectors can still find riches aplenty on Leavenworth’s steep flanks, although gold is king in Silver Plume these days, and his gala coronation is conducted anew each autumn in nature’s grand cathedral.

Silver Plume dons its autumn finery

 

 

 

For connoisseurs of fall finery, it doesn’t get any better than the Pavilion Point Trail, a relatively indulgent off-road amenity offering a delightfully intimate look at Clear Creek County’s most public seasonal spectacle. To stake your own claim, exit at Silver Plume, jog south under Interstate 70, and sidle west for a quarter mile along the dirt access road that parallels the highway. Then get out your camera, because you’ll need it.

A subtle mosaic

 

Plunging into dense pine and spruce, you’ll find yourself sauntering due east, and gaining height steadily, but not hastily. Within just a few hundred yards you’ll behold one of Clear Creek’s least-seen and most-enchanting panoramas – Silver Plume laid out beneath you in its pioneering entirety. But don’t fill up your photo-chip at the very first vantage, because the view only gets better.

The trail carves five long switchbacks through the forest on its way up the mountainside, and offers a remarkable showcase of Clear Creek’s sterling historical pedigree. That’s because it lies atop the ancient Argentine Central Railroad grade, which provides both an ascent gentle enough for heavily burdened steam engines and lightly conditioned pedestrians alike, and a very personal look at artifacts, great and small, from the Argentine’s bright mineral past. Massive ore-chutes lumber past at intervals, and mossy, dry-laid stone revetments support the ground beneath your feet. Short spurs projecting ahead at each about-face in the trail should be explored to the fullest, because each comes equipped with its own fascinating freight.

 

The bones of ancient industry

 

For our purpose, the trail concludes four miles from where it began, although persons of particular energy can follow the broad rail-bed into the high Argentine if they feel like it. You’ll know you’ve reached Pavilion Point when you meet a lonesome-looking stone chimney standing watch at a spot that, were it less densely wooded, might supply fine views of Georgetown. Promoters with more ambition than good fortune once undertook to construct a posh mountain resort in that place, but little besides the solitary smokestack remains.

 

End of the line

 

To the remote observer, Leavenworth Mountain appears only casually painted with Colorado’s signature softwood. And yet, be it by design or happy happenstance, the Argentine Central seems to steam straight through the heart of every quaking grove on the mountainside. In many places, towering specimens reaching up to catch the westering sun blaze like molten gold. In many others, dense concentrations of thin, white trunks press close enough to muffle all sound except the quiet swish of your feet through a carpet of brilliant doubloons.

Paved with gold

Perhaps the most remarkable aspect of autumn on Pavilion Point is that so few people appreciate its unique gifts. But that just leaves more gold for you.

Picture perfect

Hypothetically speaking

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Say you’re an estimable North Evergreen gent cruising around in your shiny black Audi. It’s a bright, sunny morning and you’re feeling peckish, so you pull into a Bergen Park drive-thru and ask for the No. 1 combo. Unfortunately, you’ve arrived on that nebulous cusp twixt breakfast and lunch and receive the No. 1 egg and muffin sandwich combo instead of the No. 1 hamburger combo you really wanted – a comical inconvenience, really, unless you’re an insufferable snot, in which case you might hurl the mistaken order back through the takeout window and demand both a full refund and the manager’s business card. Who knows? As crazy as it sounds, you might even decide the restaurant wasn’t responding fast enough to suit your esteemed self and storm inside to present your righteous demands directly into somebody’s face until they’ve all been met to your utter satisfaction. You might, but you probably wouldn’t, because then you might get a visit from a sheriff’s deputy who – even though the restaurant generously declines to press charges – might write you a ticket for disorderly conduct. Thank goodness you were raised better than that.

Mount Evans Rescue

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As a volunteer, Paul ‘Woody’ Woodward prefers to do as little as possible.

“I want to be bored,” says Woody. “Boring is good.”

That’s because when Woody and his 84 fellow mountaineers of the elite Alpine Rescue Team (ART) have something to do it usually means that somebody’s in a peck of trouble. ART performed 145 rescues last year, a new record that’s on track to be broken this year, and broken again the year after that.

“As the state’s population goes up, so does the number of people using the back country,” explains Woody, a fifth-generation Coloradan and 29-year ART veteran. “It’s a trend happening statewide.”

Even so, clocking in on the morning of June 13 he had reasonable hopes for a tedious shift. “Tuesdays are usually pretty quiet.” He stopped hoping shortly before noon.

“A 22-year old male had a bad allergic reaction on Mount Bierstadt.”

Woody’s one of ART’s 15 mission coordinators, each one on call two days per month. When somebody gets cross-ways with the great outdoors anywhere in Clear Creek, Gilpin and Jefferson counties, it’s the coordinator’s job to assemble a crew and direct the rescue. An able 19 team members answered Clear Creek’s call to Beirstadt and made tracks for the mountain. As good luck would have it, the problem resolved itself while the team was in transit.

“Right as we got there he hiked out,” Woody shrugs. “So we turned around and came back.”

It happens that way sometimes, and that’s just fine with ART. A second call at 2:30, however, wouldn’t be answered so easily.

“A 31-year-old male fell while rock climbing in Golden Gate Canyon.”

Extracting the unfortunate fellow required that a 22-member team first reach his isolated location and secure him to a litter, and then haul him 400 feet straight up to the ridgeline and painstakingly lower him 800 vertical feet down the other side.

“It’s a lot of work,” Woody laughs.

The four-and-a-half hour operation was a solid day’s duty by any standard, and it was about to look like a milk run.

“Now it’s 7 o’clock and we get the big call. A 16-year-old male is missing, last seen at the summit of Mount Evans.”

The missing teen was from Atlanta, the guest of a Rocky Mountain summer camp, and on that sunny Tuesday a family friend had driven him to the top of Mount Evans to suck up an eyeful of Colorado’s high-altitude grandeur. The young man hiked the short trail from the parking area to the 14,265-foot crest, posed for a few smiling snaps, and things had gone downhill from there.

“Instead of hiking back down the trail to the car, he made a fateful decision,” Woody says. “He didn’t know the terrain, wasn’t familiar with the area, but decided he could walk down to Summit Lake on his own. He told the family friend he’d meet her at Summit Lake and waved goodbye.”

It takes time to organize a rescue. Team members converge on ART’s headquarters in El Rancho from all parts of the Denver metropolitan area, from there heading west into some of the Centennial State’s least-welcoming terrain. It was well after 8 p.m. before rescuers had firmly staged at Summit Lake, and the odds of swiftly locating a boy alone in that harsh wilderness were falling as fast as the westering sun.

On the likelihood that the teenager’s trail led north along the rocky West Ridge connecting Mount Evans to neighboring 13,842-foot Mount Spalding , teams deployed to both peaks while spotters set up at Summit Lake made use of the day’s last, thin light to scan its length from below. Between the two summits stretched a vast bowl, its plunging sides a dangerous jumble of blasted rock and loose scree. The missing boy could have been anywhere within that impenetrable landscape. Or nowhere.

If he’d had a smart phone, his ordeal might have been over in hours. Alpine Rescue could have located him by GPS, or instructed him to turn on his flashlight app and zeroed in for a quick extraction. “We were looking for the only teenager in America without a cell phone.”

The Evans team was met at the top by sustained 60 mph winds, It may have been Spring on the calendar, but it was still winter on top of the Rockies.

“It was 80 degrees in Denver that afternoon,” Woody recalls. “With wind chill, we figured it was close to zero on the ridge. The kid was wearing blue jeans and a hoodie,”

As the Evans team probed west and then north along the ridgeline, their counterparts laboriously worked their way up the steep Mount Spalding trail. They’d nearly reached the summit when they were stopped in their tracks by thin scraps of a cry for help, desperate shouts torn to shreds in the teeth of the gale. Listening intently, the Spalding crew’s best guess put the voice’s owner somewhere far below near the boggy mouth of the creek that feeds Summit Lake.

Immediately, and in full dark, they started descending a sheer and trackless tangle of boulders and scale, bottoming out at about midnight to find the narrow valley floor deserted. They called out, and were answered from somewhere directly above them. Without hesitation the Spalding team started climbing, clawing its way up slope no less forbidding than the one they’d just come down. For three perilous hours the men fought their way upwards through 150 stories of precarious talus and treacherous snow before finally running straight up against a sheer wall of stone. It was 3 a.m., and they were just 200 feet below the voice in the darkness.

“They simply didn’t have the equipment they needed to continue,” Woody says. “They spent the rest of the night right there, yelling up at the young man every five minutes, trying to keep him calm and reassured.”

If Woody now knew the lost teen’s location, he also knew he had a team exposed and at risk on a dangerous slope, and he knew that getting everybody out safely wasn’t going to be easy. He called for reinforcements from Boulder’s crack Rocky Mountain Rescue Group (RMRG), which sent over a team specifically outfitted for the tough jobs ahead.

As the first gray light of dawn touched Summit Lake’s flat surface, ART and RMRG teams deployed along the West Ridge, and the Alpine team began by gingerly lowering a man from the tumbled ridge crest. In a stroke of good luck helped along careful spotting from Alpine members stationed at Summit Lake, he descending in direct line with the shivering hiker. In a stroke of bad, the rope he clung to came down five feet short of the mark.

“The rescuer had to rig personal webbing and cord to safely reach the young man,” Woody says. “But he got him.”

The rescuer immediately strapped the freezing boy into a harness and then plied him with food, water and warm clothing. While the Alpine team above hauled the pair 400 feet to the ridge, the Boulder crew did the same for Alpine’s exhausted Spalding team. By 9 o’clock, Woody’s hoped-for boring shift was pushing 24 hours of non-stop crises. But if ART has accomplished a lot of notable rescues, the Mount Evans mission stood out not only for its uncommon challenges and complexity, but for the real and significant risks it posed the rescuers. That everyone made it home intact is testament to the value of training, experience and iron nerve.

“We had 33 men and women on that mission, and we needed every one of them.”

Viewed in the warm light of day it was clear the boy had initially fallen a short distance from above, landing unharmed, but utterly trapped, on a ledge no bigger than the average coffee table perched above 1,000 gulp-inducing feet of certain death. And yet, with that unaccountable resilience of youth, the lad walked out under his own steam, climbed into his companion’s car and toodled back to Atlanta without a word about how he’d arrived at his terrible predicament. That’s okay though, because everybody at Alpine Rescue Team already knew his story by heart.

“He went up there with a plan, and he changed it,” explains Woody. “hen you’re hiking in the back country, you need to make a plan, make sure somebody knows the plan, and then stick to the plan.

“That kid’s story could have ended a lot of different ways. It was our job to make sure it ended with him alive.”