Category Archives: News

Dauntless Dog’s Deafening Derring-Do Delivers Dreadful Driver

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Sammy3One of the advantages of living high among the hills south of Evergreen is the quiet. A creature of habit, Jim Samuelson rose early on Apr. 4, and went downstairs to relax and wake up easy in the pre-dawn hush. Or he tried to, anyway.

“The dog started barking and he wouldn’t leave me alone,” Jim says. “He started barking at the window, then he’d run back and bark at me, and back and forth and back and forth, just staring at me like he was trying to tell me something and barking like crazy.”

It was about 7:15 a.m., and Jim wasn’t interested in chasing down phantoms. He and his wife, Connie, occupy two wooded acres far up a maze of switchback roads that see more natural traffic than the human kind, and their dog, Sammy, a smallish brown and black fellow of no identifiable age or lineage, can usually find something in the neighborhood worth yapping at. On that cool Wednesday morning, however, something in Sammy’s voice, his eyes, his urgency, moved Jim to action.

“He was really agitated,” Jim says. “He always knows when something’s wrong.”

If Sammy is especially protective of his comfortable household and quick to note anything amiss within that happy sphere, it’s probably because he used to be on the outside looking in. The Samuelsons met Sammy in 2002 under what qualify as extraordinary circumstances.

“We were living in San Jose, Calif., and at about 11 o’clock, one night, we heard an explosion outside,” Jim recalls. “We went outside to see what it was, but all we saw was this little dog in the street who was obviously terrified. We calmed him down and went back inside, and then there was another explosion. It turns out one of the neighbors was throwing fire bombs at his wife’s car, or something. Anyway, we took the little dog inside with us.”

After a week of steady trying, the Samuelsons located the pup’s nominal owners, a free-spirited and not particularly dog-ready young couple who willingly turned their sometimes-pet over to Jim and Connie. Ever since then, Sammy’s been repaying the Samuelson’s kindness with the only gifts available to his kind – unshakable love, steadfast loyalty and, above all, eternal vigilance.

“If we lock the cat out at night, he’ll bark at the door until we take care of the problem,” Jim says. “On that morning, when he started running up and down the stairs I knew that something must be going on.”

Half expecting to surprise a sleepy fox or a raccoon on his way to some mischief, Jim stepped out the front door and looked around. Houses are far between on Falcon Ridge Drive, and at first he saw only trees and shadows and the eastern horizon just beginning to smolder. Then, making his way farther toward the road, he discovered that something was most definitely going on.

“I looked down the road and saw a big boulder lying in the street, and then I saw an upside-down SUV on the edge of the road with its lights on. It was clear that Sammy had heard the crash.”

Jim hurried to the stricken vehicle, apprehensive but resolute. The vehicle’s turn signal blinked a steady, silent orange halo onto the road’s rough surface and the radio sent quiet voices into the chill air. And that was all.

“There was nobody in the car. I could see that it had rolled down the hill from the switchback above my house, about 60 feet. From where it landed I could see the switchback below, and there was a man lying in the road 60 feet farther down.”

After failing to raise anyone at a nearby house, Jim raced home to call 911 and grab an armload of blankets. At 7:30, just minutes before sunup, he knelt beside the fallen man. It was his neighbor, 37-year-old Robert Ryan.

“I know him, but his face was covered with blood and I never recognized him,” Jim says. “I waited with him until the paramedics and police came, and then I waited until they all left. There aren’t a lot of people on our road, and it was at least 30 or 40 minutes before another car came by. If Sammy hadn’t heard him, he could have been laying there a long time.”

But Sammy did hear him, and Ryan may well be alive today because of it.

Jim quickly surmised what authorities later concluded – that Ryan’s vehicle plunged down from the first switchback and came to rest at the edge of the road in front of the Samuelson’s house. Probably injured and certainly dazed, Ryan crawled out of his battered car through the passenger-side window, unaware in the darkness that another sheer cliff yawned below. His second fall was, in all likelihood, the most terrible.

Robert’s wife, Kristal, is thankful for many things. She’s thankful that her husband is a fanatic about wearing a seat belt, a quality she believes helped him survive the ordeal. And she’s thankful that, despite suffering a major skull fracture and serious brain injuries, Robert is doing remarkably well.

“He’s awake, eating, talking, walking and taking showers by himself,” Kristal says. “It’s tricky with brain injuries, but he’s back to calling me a hundred times a day like he used to, so that’s a good sign.”

And she’s thankful for a caring neighbor who stepped up to help Robert and kept right on helping.

“Jim drove me down to the hospital and stayed with me that whole day. I can’t thank him enough.”

And she’s really, really thankful for one on-the-ball dog named Sammy, a 20-pound mutt with sharp ears and the heart of a lion.

“How do you thank somebody who saved your husband’s life?” Kristal asks. “I think I’m going to buy him a day at a doggie-spa. And I hope he keeps barking like crazy and being the fantastic dog he is.”

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A Proper Patriotic Party

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Looking down the barrel of a three-day weekend, a lot of people would rather spend the Fourth of July hiking, boating, barbecuing or burning up the highway between here and Aunt Myrtle’s house than spend their precious time off on patriotic frivolities.

Who can blame them? These are busy times, after all, and Colorado’s a busy place. Traditionalists, however, may crave an old-fashioned, flag-waving, watermelon-on-the-lawn sort of Independence Day, and there may be others for whom dear old Gotham has become a trifle warm, of late. For those patriotic citizens and willful exiles, a short drive west into the cool, welcoming bosom of Clear Creek County offered a summer holiday the way Norman Rockwell would have painted it.

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Georgetown is a picturesque delight in any season. On Monday, with smiling families strolling casually along its shady lanes and pretty, smiling girls and handsome, smiling boys lining historic, flag-draped 6th Street, it was the very picture of America like Hollywood producers and political campaign managers imagine it. Except in Georgetown, on Monday, it was the real thing.

“It’s like going back 50 years,” said local author Sandra Dallas. “There’s a lot of patriotism and a whole lot of town spirit.” Dallas and her husband, Bob Atchison, had been tapped to Judge the Fourth of July parade – no small honor, one would think. “It’s because I have a house on Rose Avenue.”

In a fit of practicality going back four decades, Georgetown selects its parade judges from its citizenry living along the route. At 10 a.m., just an hour before go-time, the porch of Dallas’ small, pink clapboard house was getting heavy traffic from local partisans, some softening her up in favor of a particular entrant, others quietly tipping her off to the patent failings of others. It was distasteful and underhanded and thoroughly, charmingly, American. Dallas, of course, had her own preconceptions about what a champion should look like.

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“The winners are usually fairly obvious,” she said. “I’ll probably give the award to my nephew.” That would be 2-year-old Forrest, who was scheduled to be pulled around the circuit in a little red wagon. Confronted by such overwhelming candor, one could do little but retreat to 6th Street and wait for Forrest to rattle by.

Built during a simpler age in a narrow space between purple mountain majesties, downtown Georgetown is a wonderfully intimate place to view a parade. Joe and Kathy Schmidt came early, staking out an advantageous corner location next to the Red Ram. Comfortable in folding chairs and holding a pair of flaxen-haired angels on their laps, The Schmidts live in Denver but make a yearly Independence Day pilgrimage to Georgetown.

“The parade, the fireworks, the water fight,” Kathy said, “we love it all.” The “water fight” is, more correctly, the Bucket Brigade Race scheduled for 2 p.m., but nobody seems to call it that, since the contest tends to spin quickly – and wetly – out of control. The Schmidts will spend the bulk of the day drying off, eating, strolling about town, relaxing by Clear Creek and anticipating the fireworks over Guanella Pass at dusk. “To be really good,” Joe explained, “fireworks have to echo off the mountains.”

At 11 a.m., a color guard of Marines in dress uniform led off bearing Old Glory and the banner of the Corps. To a person accustomed to the jaded indifference of the 21st century, the sight of hundreds of men instinctively removing their caps in deference to the flag was surprising and incredibly poignant. It was just the beginning. Little Forrest got a run for his money that day, and Dallas was not to be envied her high office.

A formation of old soldiers in white shirts and slacks, proud veterans of long-ago wars, marched down the street in close order, stopping at intervals and turning sharply to salute the crowd. They were followed by a procession of men who had fought in the last great battle of World War II, the bloody capture of Iwo Jima. Those aged and necessary reminders of the price of freedom gave way to more festive spectacles like a troupe of kilted bagpipers playing patriotic ditties like “Yankee Doodle Dandy.” It’s impossible to really appreciate that song until it’s rendered on the pipes.

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It was hard to guess the crowd’s favorite because it clearly loved everything that came down the pike, but the steady applause seemed to gain intensity when the Easter Seals HandiCamp contingent moved past behind a camp bus they had, themselves, painted up special for the occasion. Some walking, others following in wheelchairs, the young campers regarded the cheering multitudes with curiously dreamy smiles, perhaps unaccustomed to so much positive attention, and the crowd responded in spades.

Perhaps the most stirring moment of the parade was provided by the Clear Creek County Democrats. Led by a hearty band of pedestrians waving and tossing candy to potential swing-voters on either side, their grand convoy included a shining white jeep and a pair of stately American-made convertibles loaded with party notables and colorful signage proclaiming support for favored political representatives. The message of those few, those happy few, was a better America, and it is no exaggeration to say that gentlemen of Georgetown then abed shall think themselves accursed they were not there, and hold their manhoods cheap whiles any speaks that saw the Democrats parade down 6th Street on Independence Day.

Jugglers, ancient giant-tired bicycles, squadrons of classic automobiles, brass bands, a semi-precision kazoo ensemble and whole cavalry brigades of youngsters tooling around on their way-over-decorated red-white-and-blue bikes – Georgetown’s parade was pretty much everything one wants to see on a bright, summer morning and almost never does.

Though no award was offered to Monday’s spectators, they deserved one. Their painted faces, funny hats and boundless enthusiasm made the event wonderfully interactive. One wouldn’t think a glittery tiara sprouting a pair of spinning antennae would produce a lump in the throat, but it does.

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So who did Dallas like? Her top honor went to the Silver Plume School float, a very purple, largely inflatable, rugrat-intensive display that likes schools that are open and said so.

“It’s kind of political,” Dallas explained, “but when kids get together to ask you to save their school…” A shrug finished her sentence for her. Forrest may forgive his Aunt Sandra when he’s older. Maybe a lot older.

Following the parade, most people adjourned to City Park, a shady precinct of lush grass and beautiful trees where Georgetown’s industrious ladies were dishing up mighty plates of everything good to eat. At noon, looking like it had been installed in the park’s gazebo during construction, the already-ubiquitous Original Cowboy Band let loose with a rousing program of true-blue American tunes while contented families reclined on the lawn licking their fingers and patting their tummies. It was the Fourth of July in Mayberry without the oppressive humidity and irritating drawls.

Clear Creek County’s excellent Fourth of July observances aren’t confined to Georgetown, of course, and knowledgeable observers insist that Idaho Springs has been setting the standard for top-notch fireworks since the mid-1960s. There are, apparently, a lot of knowledgeable observers because three hours before show time there wasn’t an unoccupied inch of grass anywhere within three blocks of Miner Street.

True savants gravitate to the city parking lot sandwiched between Miner Street and Interstate 70, four blocks of folding chairs, hibachis and heady anticipation that directly face Bridal Veil Falls and Charley Tayler’s impressive water wheel, the Idaho Springs landmarks that help give the town’s pyrotechnic display it’s luminous reputation. The lot was also a sort of pre-display area where state-approved fireworks available to ordinary people were ignited in great numbers. Because Colorado law prohibits civilians from purchasing explosive fireworks, one must conclude that Idaho Springs was thick with small-arms fire that afternoon.

Determined to get a good spot, Stacy Fawcett and Chris Skipp arrived from Littleton at 1 p.m. and settled in to wait for darkness. Neither had seen the display before, but both were already amiably disposed toward the town.

“We have great memories of Idaho Springs,” Fawcett said. “We usually stop by Tommyknockers or the Buffalo Bar on the way back from fishing.” This year, they decided to make the town their destination instead of a way-station. “Some friends come here every year and told us we shouldn’t miss the fireworks, so here we are.”

A short distance away, Floyd Hill resident Linda Beasler acted as reluctant spokeswoman for a party of eight enjoying their umpteenth Independence Day in Idaho Springs. Its comfy seating, well-stocked coolers and expansive buffet table mark the group as seasoned enthusiasts. Parked in the first rank with an unimpeded view of the adjacent hillside, one might assume they had been there since first light. Not so.

“That’s why we have teenagers,” Beasler laughed. “We sent them here at 6:30 with two cars to grab our spot.” It’s that kind of enterprise and exploitation of child labor that made America the powerhouse it is today.

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According to the Idaho Springs Fire Department, the show was to begin at “dusk.” The opening salvo, a glorious, blazing representation of Old Glory, was actually fired at 9:25 which is really more like “night.” Anyway, it was well worth the wait. What followed was a solid 50 minutes of superbly choreographed fireworks that lit up the surrounding hills and rebounded powerfully off the canyon walls. Thousands gasped in simultaneous admiration when a lengthy string of pyrotechnics strung across the hillside was lit, sending a shower of sparks cascading down the falls and backlighting the water wheel with a fiery curtain of stars. It would have been impressive anywhere but, thanks to Idaho Springs’ unique geography, it was pure magic.

At 10:15, a flaming banner reading “Goodnite ISFD” signaled the end of the show and the beginning of the desperate race to get onto the highway before the streets became a solid, creeping mass of frustrated motorists. It’s a yearly ritual that has done nothing to detract from the event’s popularity.

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Independence Day means different things to different people, and spending the day mowing the lawn or finally taking down the Christmas lights can be legitimate acts of patriotism. Still, it’s heartening to know that there are places in Colorado’s high country where the Fourth of July is a full-blown celebration of national and community pride. In Clear Creek County, nobody needs an invitation to attend America’s best birthday party. They just need to relax and enjoy the fun.

Before You Go – Lowered Expectations on Top of the World

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You’re probably thinking,

“Maybe this is the year I quit smoking, drinking and banging Mr. Brownstone, and finally climb Mount Everest.”

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I think that’s great. Dream big, I say. For myself, this summer I have every good intention of completing the entire Rootin’ Teuton Sausage Tour at Helmut’s Black Forest Café & Wurst Haus, which is totally similar.

While such laudable gustatory achievements have yet to gain wide acknowledgement, we are relentlessly reminded that climbing Mount Everest might be the noblest endeavor of which a person is capable. Think of it: Bravely pitting your fragile substance against that dangerous and indifferent monolith; fighting your way into the gasping sky to the greater glory of King and Country; surpassing the boundaries of physical and mental endurance in selfless celebration of the indomitable human spirit.

It just sounds so cool, right?

But before you mortgage the farm for a Sherpa-class ticket to Kathmandu, you should talk to Clark Jackson. For what it’s worth, Jackson may well be the only mountaineer in world history who never claimed to have picked up the sport for lofty philosophical reasons.

“I feel like it’s something I’m pretty good at,” he explains. “You always want to do things you’re good at.”

Way to suck the romance right out of it, Clark. Still, I’ve got to grant him points for getting after the world’s highest mountain. Goodness knows his wife wasn’t making with the kudos.

“Actually, nobody I know thought it was a good idea,” Jackson admits. “But I’m a pretty cautious climber, and I was pretty sure I’d be okay.”

On the mountain locals call Sagarmatha, okay is a relative term. Soaring more than five miles into the atmosphere, Everest is an unforgiving mass of rock and ice littered with the bodies of those who hadn’t the skill or judgment or luck to survive its treacheries. No other mountain even comes close to Everest in difficulty and sheer peril. Near its summit you breathe a third less oxygen than at sea level, making even simple tasks – tying a bootlace, adjusting a crampon, snapping a selfie – a universe of fatigue. A clear, still morning can become a blinding wilderness of swirling snow without warning, and the summit is frequently hammered by sustained winds exceeding 150mph. In the everer“death zone” at altitudes above 27,000 feet, the body begins to die, and no amount of rest or nourishment or bottled oxygen can stop the decay. The only salvation is straight down.

But danger means nothing to courageous men like me and Jackson. The expense, on the other hand, can be daunting, and you start paying through the nose long before you get within smelling distance of an honest-to-goodness yak. The typical climbing kit starts at $8,000 for gear, plus another $3,000 for bottled oxygen. Airfare from the Heartland will set you back about $2,000, an official Nepalese or Tibetan climbing permit can run an extortionate $25,000, and expect to fork over at least $2,000 for airport transfers to and from Base Camp.

Once you’re into the scene for a solid $40,000, it’s time to shatter that credit limit into smithereens and engage a guide service. For basic amenities like food, expect to pay $40,000. For Ambassador-class amenities like an actual guide, roped routes, and some assurance of first-aid as required, $80,000 is closer to the mark. For an additional consideration, true adventurers may also enjoy personal porters, personal cooks, and personal tent-putter-uppers.

I mean, you’re not an animal, right?

Figure fees on the order of $120,000 just to get your foot in the Everest Club door.

The spring climbing season is a brief window that creaks ajar as the jet stream’s savage winds shift north of the Himalayas, and slams shut again six weeks later when the summer monsoon unleashes storms and heavy snow from the south. Arriving at the 17,000-plus-foot base camp in late April, 2006, Jackson spent the next three weeks building his endurance and getting to know something about the dozen other members of his party, an international collection of diverse temperaments and outlooks hailing from the U.S., Britain, Austria, Brazil, Ecuador and Malaysia. Jackson quickly struck up a close acquaintance with British climber David Sharp, a friendly sort who’d tried – and failed – to summit Everest twice before.

“He was like a lot of Englishmen,” Jackson recalls. “A little eccentric and very opinionated, but a good guy. There’s a lot of down-time before a climb, so you have a chance to get pretty close to people, and I spent more time talking with Sharp than anyone else.”

A lot of what he and Sharp talked about was the increasing frequency of thefts on Everest.

“I was disillusioned because it went against my belief that everybody on the mountain is trustworthy, that everybody pulls together and helps each other achieve a common goal,” says Jackson. “It’s unconscionable to take something that someone needs to survive, and stuff was disappearing from camps almost every day.”

Who would do such a thing? In 2008, two years after Jackson’s tale was told, Michael Kodas published “High Crimes: The Fate of Everest in an Age of Greed” detailing the prevalence of unethical guides, shady Sherpas, rampant prostitution, runaway gambling and outright fraud that has come to characterize Base Camp.

“Sherpas take the stuff to sell,” says Jackson. “I mean, there are good ones and bad ones, but the bad ones are pretty bad. Sometimes, equipment would be coming to Base Camp on yak-trains and the yak drivers would take off with everything.”

Jackson also got to know a Brazilian litterbug named Vitor Negrete who was making his second Everest attempt.

“He was nice, but he was definitely a different kind of guy,” Jackson says. “I called him ‘The Barbarian’ because he was really messy. He just didn’t care about anything but getting to the top.”

???????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????Then again, what’s a few Snickers wrappers amid the more than 50 tons of trash and flash-frozen sewage weighing down Everest’s brawny slopes? As it happened, thieves cleaned out Negrete’s Camp II even as he fought for his life in the thin air far above.

If there were plenty of experienced mountaineers present at Base Camp, the place positively teemed with rank novices who’d paid heavy fees to guide companies that promised an easy ride to the end of the world’s toughest hike.

“There were a lot of people who didn’t really look like they belonged there, like they weren’t really ready for Everest.”

Adding a bizarre, Hollywood aspect to the already surreal scene on the mountain, a Discovery Channel film crew was on hand to document the ascent of New Zealander Mark Ingliss, who lost both legs to frostbite while trying to scale Everest in 1982.

“It was a real circus,” Jackson sighs. “I understand the commercial aspects of mountaineering, but it was still pretty weird.”

On May 10, Jackson made his bid for the summit, a grueling three-day plod nearly 8,000 feet straight up, culminating in a brief, dizzying interlude beneath only the stars. Along the way he tumbled to another of Everest’s dirty little secrets.

“Like most people, I thought all Sherpas were expert mountaineers who could help you in any situation,” Jackson says. “I was surprised to find out that they don’t know all that much. They’re able to function at high altitude, but they don’t know anything about the equipment. Beyond being experts at following one route up the mountain, they’re not that much help.”

Of six others from his 13-member trekking party who achieved the holy grail of mountaineering, two perished miserably before they could descend to safety, including David Sharp, who died near the summit while troops of fellow climbers trudged past within inches of his prostrate form just two days after Jackson’s triumph. Even as Jackson struggled with the death of his British friend, word trickled down from above that Negrete had succumbed to altitude sickness as he descended from the summit on May 18, dying high on the side of the pitiless mountain. His cold fate was Jackson’s last straw.

“When I heard about the deaths, it changed my whole dynamic. After all that time and trouble, two members of my party died. Everybody told me that once you’ve been to the Himalayas, they get in your blood and you’ll always come back. But I don’t think I’d ever go back, even if I hadn’t made the summit. All of a sudden getting to the top of a mountain didn’t seem all that important. I just wanted to go home.”

bottleneckIt was merely the last – and worst – of many disillusionments Jackson suffered during his Himalayan holiday. As equipment, infrastructure and commercial incentives improve, unprecedented numbers of climbers are reaching Mount Everest’s summit. More than 200 hardy hikers joined Jackson on the summit 2006. A whopping 658 stood astride Everest’s white crown in 2013, nearly all of them scoring their goal during three short episodes of acceptable weather. There, on the very top of the world, it is now possible to stand in line for five hours waiting for the 200-plus people ahead of you to navigate the “Hillary Step” bottleneck.

While good news for the casual campaigner, that remarkable summiting success rate begs abuse. Because there may possibly be some few mountaineers for whom the summiting Everest is invested with the smallest element of personal aggrandizement, and since merely getting to the top is no longer sufficient to get your name in the hometown fish-wrap, there could conceivably exist a mild motivation within less sturdy psychologies to find other avenues to distinction.

“Everybody’s trying to be a ‘first.’”

Fact is, that trend has been apparent since at least 1990, when for no obvious good reason an Australian adventurer named Tim Macartney-Snape became the first to trek to the top of Everest from sea-level. Once that was accomplished, in 1999 Babu Chiri Sherpa had little choice but to become the first person to spend the night atop Everest. In 2000, Slovenian Davo Karnicar became the first to ski down from the top, and the following year Marco Saffredi, a Frenchie, and Stefan Gatt, and Austrianie, were the first to snowboard down the mountain. Also in 2001, Erik Weihenmayer became the first blind person to take the walk. The youngest to summit Everest was 13-year-old Jordan Romero in 2010, the oldest woman to do so was Tamae Watanabe, 73, in 2012, and the flat-out oldest was 80-year-old Yuichiro Miura in 2013.

skiIn 2004, Moni Mule Pati and Pem Dorjee Sherpa, both of Nepal, became the first to get married atop Mount Everest, concealing their wedding plans until their hapless (and presumably giftless) guests were assembled thereon. In 2006, when Jackson was making his way onward and upward, Lakpa Tharke Sherpa, 24, claimed laurels as the first man to be naked on the summit, shedding his polars and standing totally starkers for three shrinkage-inducing minutes. As propriety would have it, Lakpa was later chastised for the deed by the Nepali government, which considers Sagarmatha sacred-ish, like a really big church with really hard pews.

Speaking of illegal attempts, the first-ever tweet from the summit was sent by Kenton Cool in 2011. “Everest summit no 9!” gloried Cool, the poetry flowing from his fingers like honeyed wine. “1st tweet from the top of the world thanks to a weak 3G signal.” Unfortunately, Nepalese authorities deemed his message, which was picked up and aired by the BBC, to be a commercial broadcast undertaken without the proper and expensive government permissions. Cool is now learning what it takes to scale the Nepali legal edifice.

Coincidentally, while being a “first” is now the goal of many Everest climbers, Jackson may well have snubbed a legitimate record of his own. A card-carrying member of the Kansas Potowatamee tribe, he is quite likely the first Native American to set foot on Everest’s peak.

“No one holds that title, and I’ve never heard of a Native American doing it, so I might be the first,” he shrugs. “But I don’t really want to go there.”

Indeed, Jackson considers getting one’s name in the history books a pointless, and potentially dangerous, preoccupation.

“One guy was going for his eighth summit,” says Jackson, shaking his head. “How many times do you need to climb it before your luck runs out?”

Three times for Sharp, for Negrete only two.

“I don’t want to be one of those guys who keep climbing time and again, who keeps pushing until something goes wrong.”

A reasonable position.

But that’s him.

Maybe your own ambition is more compelling than Jackson’s timely caution. Maybe you dream of being the first to wear a fake mustache on Everest, or to down the mountain’s first Jello-shot, or be the first to perform La Marseillaise on a harmonica with the whole world as your audience. I won’t dump in your corn flakes, so long as you have a good reason and $120,000.

But I won’t be joining you, I’m afraid.

I expect to have a lot on my plate.

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Evergreen’s Trash, Golden’s Treasure

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The next time you’re doing business in Golden, do yourself the pleasure of stopping by to see an old Evergreen friend.

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Okay, maybe not “friend” so much as “brief acquaintance.” Or, possibly, “unwelcome guest,” or even “bitter enemy,” depending on how long you can hold a grudge. In any case, you’ll likely find a courtesy call to Evergreen’s one-time Dam Bridge well worth the effort.

Set out from Lions Park, a restful haven of grass and quietude across from the Golden Community Center on 10th Street. Pointing your feet west, mosey up the smooth cement path beside Clear Creek’s rushing waters until concrete gives way to dirt. You’ve just entered Jefferson County Open Space’s Grant Terry Park, some 13 acres of wild splendor at the mouth of Clear Creek Canyon.

Continuing along the broad, sun-dappled trail beneath a rustling cottonwood canopy, spare a nod and a smile for the young mother behind the stroller, the family pedaling along on their bicycles, the older couple strolling hand in hand. Though quite new, the Grant Terry Trail has already attracted a diverse and loyal clientele.

Finally, after a pleasant half mile of birdsong, butterflies and willow hedge, a soaring outline suddenly appears above the green riot, a majestic construction of weathered steel uniting Clear Creek’s stony banks. Could this noble span really be the most maligned character in Evergreen history? The one variously condemned as a “disgrace,” an “eyesore” and “insulting” by outraged Evergreen worthies?

In fact, it’s one and the same, and Golden residents Kevin and Liana Wolfe are pleased to welcome the massive castaway to their neighborhood.

“I think it looks good,” says Kevin, sitting atop his bicycle at the bridge’s northern abutment. “I’ve always liked that industrial style.”

“It’s nice to ride over,” Liana says, admiring the bridge’s rusty patina from the stylish seat of a sleek, retro-style coaster. “You get a good view of the creek from up there.”

For those Evergreen residents lucky enough to have missed all the ruckus, the Gilded City’s newest pedestrian conduit was originally intended to facilitate foot traffic between Evergreen Lake and Main Street. Alas, JCOS neglected to obtain a general public nod on the project before installing the bridge next to next to the Evergreen dam in late summer, 2004. By Christmas, vehement public criticism had run the walkway clean out of town.

For years the banished bridge languished on the Greeley compound of its creator, Big R Manufacturing, providing access from nowhere to nowhere else at a cost to the county of $600 a month. Then, last fall, it received a new lease on life.

“It worked out pretty well, really,” explains JCOS planner Dennis Faulkner. “We needed a bridge to connect Grant Terry Park on one side of the creek with Clear Creek County on the other, and that bridge was all ready to go.”

It should be noted that, at the moment, the former Dam Bridge still doesn’t really go anywhere. The wide gravel path extends less than a hundred yards into Clear Creek County before melting into the wilderness. Happily, plans are in the works that could someday transform Evergreen’s ugly duckling into Golden’s most popular swan.

“The idea is to connect Golden with the proposed Clear Creek Trail,” says Faulkner. “In concept, that trail will run up Clear Creek Canyon as far as Tunnel No. 1, and eventually tie into the Continental Divide Trail. But the bridge gets a surprising amount of traffic right now, even without a trail on the other side. Joggers, families, picnickers – you’d be amazed.”

If the backwoods viaduct doesn’t necessarily amaze the Vogelsang family, it’s definitely got their attention.

“We’ve ridden up here many times, but this is the first time we’ve been across the creek,” says Chris Vogelsang, fresh from a round trip with his wife, Beth, and their 8-year-old son, Andrew. “It’s a great bridge, and a really good addition to this community.”

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Ufologically Speaking

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In Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s classic tale “The Sign of Four,” detective Sherlock Holmes instructs Dr. Watson thusly: “Eliminate all other factors and whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth.”

Eliminating all other factors is South Jeffco resident John Schuessler’s primary occupation, and he hopes to someday uncover the truth about the baffling aerial phenomenon commonly referred to as Unidentified Flying Objects – UFOs.

flash gordonSpeaking to a capacity crowd at Littleton’s Bemis Public Library recently, Schuessler recounted some of Colorado’s more dramatic UFO sightings and detailed how the organization he helped found 40 years ago is trying to bring the mysterious lights in the sky to earth.

Littleton resident and Arapahoe Community College business professor Jerry Thomas came to hear Schuessler for the least mysterious of reasons.

“It sounds like an interesting topic,” he said.

Not one to volunteer the information, when pressed Thomas recounted how he and a buddy, while stationed aboard a Navy vessel stationed in the South China Sea many years ago, saw “something vertical” hovering on the near horizon. As they watched, the object turned 90 degrees and shot out of sight.

“It took off like a rocket,” Thomas said. “At exactly the same time we both said ‘what the hell was that?’” So, you’d call that a UFO? “Well, it was unidentified to me,” he laughed, and took his seat.

lostInSpaceAccording to Schuessler, reports of weird things flitting around above the Centennial State date back at least to 1926 when a stunt pilot claimed to encounter six “giant manhole covers” in the air above Colorado Springs.

“There were no ‘UFOs’ in 1926,” Schuessler said, “so he just described them as he saw them.”

More recently, numerous witnesses reported seeing a large circular object hovering over AT&T’s Denver laboratory in 1985. Lingering for several minutes in full daylight at low altitude before whizzing off, the great, shiny disc generated lots of consistent testimony but no easy answers.

In 1995, Schuessler said, two UFOs were sighted by numerous observers in Leadville and, just a couple of years ago, a tornado chaser perched on the hogback anticipating a rough late-spring afternoon was startled by a pair of “large bowling balls” floating past on a northeasterly course toward Denver International Airport.

enterprisePerhaps Colorado’s most spectacular UFO sighting occurred in 2004 when scores of picnickers at a park on Estes Street in Lakewood reported seeing an enormous disc appear in the clear sky overhead.

“A lot of them had video cameras” Schuessler said, “and lights on the object can be seen pulsing at 8.26 hertz, right about the limit of what the eye can detect.”

Although Schuessler didn’t bring any videotapes to the presentation, he brought plenty of pictures. Unfortunately, he only managed to display one intriguing – and very clear – image of three stationary discs parked in the sky over Denver International Airport before the light bulb in the library’s overhead-projector burned out. When the backup bulb was found to be inoperable, some in the audience suggested the situation exceeded the definition of coincidence.

2001Schuessler’s involvement in UFO research started in 1965, when he worked at the Johnson Space Center in Houston. In charge of life-support systems for NASA’s Gemini IV manned space mission, Schuessler became friends with the two astronauts detailed to the project, one of whom took several photographs of a strange object that shadowed the Gemini capsule as it orbited the earth. Back on earth, NASA technicians processed the film and dumbfounded the astronaut by returning pictures that were clearly not of the object he’d seen in space.

“It was obvious they weren’t the pictures he’d taken,” Schuessler said. “It got my attention.”

In 1969, together with a handful of other curious sorts, Schuessler launched the Mutual UFO Network, or MUFON, dedicated to investigating and documenting flying singularities or trace evidence thereof. From humble beginnings, MUFON has grown to more than 3,000 regular members from all walks of life – including lifetime-member Dan Aykroyd – and nearly 500 trained investigators and who study sightings from pole to pole. Recognized as a leading authority on UFOs, Schuessler has appeared on dozens of television programs exploring the subject.

guardianOnce upon a time Schuessler kept a storefront at Chatfield Avenue and Kipling Street in Littleton where Colorado MUFON volunteers Ginger and Jack Sawatzki once spent hours sorting and filing countless faxed reports before the increasing volume and international scope of UFO sightings prompted Schuessler to close the shop and shift reporting to the internet. Though Ginger’s never actually seen a UFO, she was one of many whose interest originated in Roswell, N.M., the alleged site of a space vehicle crash more than a half-century ago.

“I’m troubled that it’s still being kept secret after 60 years,” she said. “There’s more going on than they’ll admit.”

Though most UFO reports originate in America, MUFON receives accounts from nearly every country. China and Russia are particularly prone to irregular aviation, and California is the hands-down leader of UFO activity in North America with almost 30 reports in April, alone.  Colorado, by contrast, is near the middle of the pack with six reports last month. Each sighting is judged by two basic criteria.

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“We look at credibility and strangeness,” Schuessler said. “Who sent the report and what did they see?”

Luckily, a large number of UFO reports are filed by police officers and airline pilots, trained observers who can generally be trusted to keep their head, provide important details and not exaggerate the facts. The second aspect, strangeness, is more subjective.

“A light in the sky isn’t strange,” Schussler said, “one that travels at high speed and makes a 90-degree course change is.”

imperialOf the tens of thousands of UFO reports MUFON has fielded over the years, only about 6,000 – roughly 10 percent – have merited a closer look. Promising cases are assigned to highly skilled volunteers, many of them scientists working in diverse disciplines like engineering, astronomy and photo analysis who examine weather reports, flight logs and a host of other sources in order to eliminate more conventional phenomenon that could explain the sighting. In most cases, mysterious fliers are revealed as something perfectly prosaic like small aircraft, weather balloons or flying squirrels, but the small percentage that defies explanation is what keeps MUFON growing.

“People make mistakes, of course, but they can’t all be wrong.” Schuessler said. “The evidence for UFOs is overwhelming.”

Following the attack on the World Trade Center, Schuessler said, some of that evidence is getting harder to come by. Before 9/11, the Federal Aviation Administration routinely made pilot transcripts available to MUFON investigators, but no longer. Fortunately, detailed radar information is still obtainable through various channels and still goes a long way toward proving or disproving UFO sightings.

futuramaIn Schuessler’s highly methodical operation, most UFOs classified as circular or disc-shaped, followed closely by orbs and cigar-shaped objects. Flying boomerangs are less common, and sightings of gigantic triangles with or without lights are rare but prized. According to MUFON statistics, 75 percent of UFOs appear in clear skies, and a surprising number appear during daylight hours. For reasons Schuessler can’t fathom, UFO activity peaks on Wednesdays.

The most valued observations are CEs – close encounters – viewed from a distance of less than 500 feet.

“It would be pretty hard to mistake something that close,” Schuessler said. Worldwide, 15 CEs were reported last month.

When questioned about the presumed link between UFOs and crop circles, Schuessler hedged. “I don’t study crop circles just because there are so many people already doing that,” he said.

Similarly, he wouldn’t comment directly on the subject of UFO abduction but granted that, given the remarkable things he’s seen in 37 years of study, the possibility for it certainly exists.

simpsonsA common misconception is that UFO researchers presume a link between UFOs and extra-terrestrials, something Schuessler flatly denied.

“I don’t know who they are or where they come from,” he said. “But I’d love to know before I stop doing this job.”