Where there are drips from the midday melt, there are icicles in the afternoon freeze and I have been keeping an eye on the development of a series of icicles that have formed from a roof just to the side of our bedroom window. The resultant series of photographs give some idea of the extent and speed of growth. These piccies were taken on 16th Dec, 24th Dec and 5th Jan.
With no guests in for a couple of weeks, we are able to look at going further afield and went to Glenwood Springs, about 50 miles away to the west. The Interstate follows the Eagle River valley and the Colorado River joins it as Dotsero just past the town of Gypsum (no prizes for the main product quarried here). Almost immediately the Interstate, the old road, the river and the Railway (Union Pacific) are squeezed into a smaller and smaller valley until it becomes a full-blown canyon with overlapping lanes of Interstate, the disappearance of the old road, the railway going more and more through tunnels in the sides of the valley, and the river looking mean and narrow (and running pretty fast). It is doing here what it has done on an even bigger scale further down in The Grand Canyon, and is cutting into the sedimentary rock as it is slowly raised on its tectonic plate. The depth of the canyon is about 1000ft at the moment and the layers of rock lie mostly horizontal but with occasional bits where the layers are vertical (heaven only knows what drama that caused at the time) and have a wide variety of colours on display depending on the amount of various minerals deposited. The sandstones have a lot of iron oxide which give it the characteristic red colour while the manganese gives it a purplish hue. Finally the squeeze is such that the Interstate goes into a tunnel as does the Railway leaving just the river racing down the valley in solitary natural splendour.
The sides are very sharp and cliff-like and the sun doesn’t shine into the bottom. This narrow valley weaves it way for 13 miles towards Glenwood Springs where it releases us and the horizons widen again. Glenwood Springs has been famous for ever for its mineral springs which issue forth from the Yampah (‘good medicine’) Springs at a rate of 3.5m galls per day at a temperature of 104 F. The Ute Indians recognized its healing properties without recognizing and naming the 18 different minerals found there and, until they were chased off, revered the gods that provided the healthy water. There is now a spa set up with two open-air pools of varying depth, where you can lounge all day in your swim-suit and walk in the snow to the Café between the pools. An ethereal look is cast over the waters by the steam which swirls around the sun-glassed bodies of the bathers.
The great and the good came to sample the spa waters and many miraculous cures were claimed. It also attracted the not so good and one John Henry (Doc) Holliday (1852 – 1887) turned up and practiced dentistry here for 4 years in an effort (unfortunately unsuccessful) to cure his tuberculosis. His tombstone is in the local cemetery and is a much-visited tourist attraction.
We determined to come back and sample the waters via a soak after visiting Aspen which is a little way down the road.
At the top of the Vail Mountain is a Yurt which is sponsored by the Gore Range Natural History Society. It has samples of the natural history found on the mountains hereabouts and a helpful young lady to answer questions. She also leads a snow-shoed tour lasting about an hour which we joined.
We learned that the top banana is the Lynx which eats, almost exclusively, mountain hares. Both these creatures have relatively enormous paws to cope with running on deep snow. A single adaptation with opposite intentions – that of survival and successful hunting. Lower down the mountain are Mountain Lions but they are unable to cope with deep snow, having smaller paws. Porcupines are abundant and exist by eating the bark from the trees for which there is plenty of evidence when you get your eye in. The next creature of importance is the familiar weasel, which is reckoned to be pound for pound the most ferocious creature on the mountain. It too lives on mountain hares, which can be anything up to 5 times the weasel’s own size, and need to eat half their bodyweight per day to maintain their high metabolic rate (this is a function of being small and not having fat deposits like the larger creatures). The guide suggested that we consider eating 350 Macdonald’s Burgers per day. A wave of nausea swept over the group but it did put the poor weasel’s plight into perspective. They live in the warmer (surprisingly perhaps) layer between the snow and the ground although their tracks can be seen as they bound over the surface of the snow after the hares. The weasel, hare and the ptarmigan (a quail-sized ground dwelling bird) all change colour to white for the winter to help with camouflage and so minimize the risk from Eagles and Ravens which are all about.
There are a lot of dead pines which are the victims of the dreaded Lodge-pole beetle which invades the tree in the summer to lay eggs which then turn into larva that eats the xylem and phloem which carry the tree’s nutrients. As they dig around they allow in a blue fungus which further damages the tree and basically, the tree is doomed. The swift spread is partly due to the forestry dept. preventing fires because of the infiltration of housing through the forested areas, which allows trees to grow old and vulnerable. Young trees are able to withstand the onslaught much better but the outlook is bleak. Perhaps spruce and larch will replace the pines but whatever happens, the current sight of acres of browned or bare trees looks very sad indeed.
We had gone up the mountain in a gondola which was going slow because of a broken gearbox and consequently took nearly 25 minutes to get up to the top. Our companions engaged in a stimulating conversation once we asked them to explain what the problems are with the Obama medical bill. ‘Light the blue touch paper and retire’ comes to mind. There was a feeling that the President was floundering and upsetting the middle classes while trying to control the enormous Health Sector which provides such a lot of jobs and GDP. Still, we were able to explain some of Britain’s little Political quirks (nobody wants to be a new Labour Leader immediately before they get pounded at an election), and the Tory view(s) on Europe. All very interesting and time-passing.
Sue’s shoulder and side have responded to Ibuprofen and we were back on the slopes today, a bit tentative but definitely a step in the right direction.
We made our way around the slopes and found Beano’s Cabin which is a wooden lodge set high up on the mountain on a little loop away from the main piste. It offers exclusive five course meals and the novelty is that the price includes the evening Snowcat ride up to the Cabin from Beaver Creek Village. We cruised in and asked if they served drinks without a reservation and the answers was no – sir. During the day it is for the exclusive use of its members while we might make a reservation for the evening if we wished. The sample menu in our ‘Eating Locally Guide’ looks really good but with no prices in evidence anywhere, I suspect it’s a case of ‘if you have to ask, you can’t afford it’. Ah well - here’s hoping for a good tip sometime and we will try it then.
With no direct connection, we have started to explore different Gins. There seems to be loads of different gins, and one particular one that caught my eye was made from grapes so ‘didn’t taste of pine needles and spruce tips’. I thought that the taste of pine needles was intrinsic to gin, so how can a grape-based infusion be gin, shouldn’t it be brandy or something? Still we have tried two so far and will explore further.
The good folk of Eagle had their vote on whether to allow a huge development of shops, restaurants and domestic dwelling and came down on the side of NO. This must be good news for ‘The Nearly Everything Shop’ and so the Eagleites will continue to be able to buy bubblegum, postcards, Barbie dolls and machine gun bullets on the same credit card transaction. How convenient is that?
I’ve mentioned the frequency of adverts on TV before and I have noticed that they fall into three main categories, Convenience Foods, Medicines and Cars. The convenience food ones stress just how healthy they are while the main medicine ones seem to be dealing with weight-loss products for diabetics. Interestingly, with all the medicine ads there is the main message ‘buy our product’ followed by a whole list of maladies and side effects (headaches, mood swings, thoughts of suicide, housemaid’s knee etc) that might be expected to occur if you take this medicine. All the while the characters continues to smile and look in the pink having taken the dose, then the anti-litigation list comes to an end, and the ‘buy our product’ message is repeated in the closing scenes. There are also ads asking if you have suffered from any ill-effects while taking XXX as a class action is in progress and compensation may be due. Obviously some side-effect hadn’t been specified clearly enough in an earlier ad.
The car ads all stress the high mileage you can expect from them and knocking copy ads are frequent eg our car (a Chrysler) is better than theirs (a Honda) because ours does 32 mpg and theirs only does 30 mpg so Nyeh Nyeh Ne Nyeh Ne. This is not usually seen in UK and is never so explicit.
The ads range from naive in the extreme (an un-photogenic garage owner trying to hold onto his teeth while shouting into the camera that he gives a better deal than anyone else), to my current favorite that shows a guy coming home, tripping through the front door, falling over the cat, dropping his briefcase on a vase of flowers on a table and falling at the feet of his wife while telling her that he had the interview and he’s got the job at the quarry and will be dealing with the dynamite and fuse caps. Pan back to the wife who is suddenly typing in ‘Life Insurance’ into a Yellow Pages search box. Lovely.
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