Archive for January 2011
Pando, CO: A Cooler Place than Most
One of the greatest advantages to reading Vail Valley Magazine are the engaging articles within it, like the one from a few weeks ago written by Shirley Welch. In the piece, “Before Camp Hale, Ice was a Cash Crop,” Welch sheds light on this corner of Colorado before the ski resorts of the 1960s came to take over the valley. The area of Pando, for example, became well known in the 1920s as the principal supplier of ice for the refrigerated cars along the Denver & Rio Grande Railroad (which began in 1882). Pando was in fact a locomotive transfer depot in the Valley and also served as a passenger railway station. It wasn’t long before Pando began to have a significant population to it, and its fortunate fate lay in the cold lakes just underneath the main ridge.
The Eagle Valley was formed during the glacial modifications of the past millennia. As the glaciers melted and retracted, much of the west end was filled with a muddy substance, resulting in a swampy area. This formed a ledge where rainwater lakes were naturally barricaded. These lakes would be of major importance in refrigerated transport of the early 1920s.
Produce from the Rocky Mountain’s valley floors and river beds needed to be sold at market in the bigger cities. The American Refrigerator Transit Company (ART) was formed, engineering railway cars that were leased to the Denver & Rio Grande. These cars were a work of ART: each one hand-constructed, built in a pine-pine
tongue and groove, and varnished to a high gloss. To enhance the insulation of these cars, the walls were packed with six feet of sawdust, and ice was loaded into the car from the top. Each car was equipped with a runoff drain to prevent flooding.
But it’s the ice that put Pando on the map. In the west end of the valley, a lake 7 feet deep was created by damming the Eagle River. Chains were placed into the water so that large chunks of ice could be pulled from the surface during the winter. Men with one-handed saws would roughly cut cubes of the ice and float it down the pond. The chains then would haul the ice out of the water and onto a finishing platform where the ice was cut into 2 feet square blocks. About 40 men were needed to cut, shape, load and finish the ice blocks, which resulted in a very prosperous business until the 1930s when the produce crops were infected by brown rot and the US military would soon begin making its arrangements to train troops in these mountains. As a consequence, the ice industry melted away to the war machine’s mighty blaze, which in turn gave birth to Vail and to ski tourism in the valley.
Trails and Tales along the Back Country in Vail
Recently, in Colorado’s high country, the Eisenhower Tunnel was closed down due to weather. For some people, the drive to Denver took up to six hours. Meanwhile, here in Vail, the snow continued to fall. In this valley powder is synonymous with downhill bliss, yet we often forget (or maybe we don’t even realize) how much else there is to do in the Vail Valley other than descending steep faces and skiing moguls. I come from a ski-touring background, and while I enjoy the downhill euphoria, I prefer discovering quiet and calm ski itineraries far from the holiday crowds. Put the downhill skis in the basement, it’s time to get the heart pumping and go uphill for a spell.
The Vail Hiker and Ski Touring Guide by Mary Ellen Gilliland gives scores of alternatives to downhill
skiing in Vail, Eagle County and the Gore Valley, among others. Gilliland writes hiking and snowshoeing guides of Eagle County. Each itinerary is viewed from the historical background unique to this region of the High Country. For example, her other books include A Gold Rush History, and Breckenridge, 150 years of Golden History. So Gilliland not only knows the background of the area, she knows the back-country. And here are two itineraries to look at the next time you make it through the tunnel:
Two Elk: The creek bearing this same name has sculpted the beautiful Two Elk Canyon. Enormous limestone sentinels herald the arrival to the trail head off of highway 24. This rock was formed by ancient marine animal shells and the mud-slit from an ancient saltwater sea that formed in the Colorado area billions of years ago. Today, many fossils can still be seen along the trail along with beautiful flora and fauna. Gilliland’s book gives perfect directions to the trail head, with lovely descriptions of the aspens and cottonwoods that accompany the journey. This itinerary is very challenging due to the narrowness of the terrain as it twists and turns among trees and along rock walls. Regardless, the itinerary offers one of the best views of Vail’s famous Back Bowls:
A knockout view awaits you at the summit…To the northwest lie the the softer contours of Vail Mountain’s famous back bowls, Mongolia, Siberia, China, Sunup, Sundown and Game Creek; southwest is Bluesky Basin. Southeast are peaks of the Sawatch Range. A [Ute] Indian name, “Sawatch” (Sagauche) means “water of the blue earth.”
No Name Road: An easier itinerary due to its wider roads and straight paths, it runs along the old road originally used by the ice harvesters in Pando (more on this in a future post). In fact, the view from this ridge gives a glimpse into the icemen’s life of almost one-hundred years ago:
Below is the site of early-day Pando and Camp Hale. The name Pando probably comes from the Spanish word meaning “slow water.” … A man named Roudebush built the first cabin at Eagle Park’s upper end (today’s Camp Hale site) after Frank Benjamin and C. C. Welsh discovered placer gold just south of present-day Pando.
The path is well protected by pines and thick evergreens and thus the wind has difficulty penetrating their branches. As an intriduction to skiing in the wilderness, this itinerary is perfect for anyone looking to break themselves into the beauty of the back-country. The incline is slightly graded and delivers a refreshing workout away from the holiday madness found in the valley, for a winter vacation that’s all uphill from here.
Adventure Travel and Social Media: an “Epic Mix”
It’s hard to find a social media platform that does the talking for you. Those of us involved in online communities are often tweeting or posting our activities to our friends and followers. For the Adventure Travel market, this has been a great way to get the word out to our present customers and potential guests. There is no easier way to let folks know what you’re up to, where you are, than an iPhone app and a tweet.
Until now.
Vail Resorts has unveiled Epic Mix: the fusion of social media and adventure travel. The idea is simple – it takes all the tweeting and status updates and places it onto an automatic platform. An opt-in system, Epic Mix is a social media ski site which tracks the number of snow days, the accumulative elevation, your award pins, and your “rank” with other participants. One of the greatest features, however, is that you don’t have to move a finger: you can tie the updates to your facebook or twitter accounts, and your friends are updated while you are still on the mountain. After a few hours on the hill, you can log in and check your total elevation gain and compare them to other Vail skiers.
The pins are a great way to measure your progress on the mountain. Some are for a given number of days on snow, others are for achieving various milestones during the course of your winter vacation (for example, there is a pin for taking the legendary Chair 5 five times, skiing on New Year’s Day, and mastering the Back Bowls). In addition, the more you explore the vast slopes of Vail, the more points you earn, and the closer you come to winning their cash prize of $100,000.
The system works by an RF feed coming from the ski pass. At the entrance to every lift, there are sensors 
receiving the RF feed from your ski pass and transmitting it to the database. The system calculates the elevation from the bottom to the top of the lift (assuming you don’t jump off half-way), and then records your data from the next chairlift. All of the lifts you ride can be viewed and edited on the Epic Mix site. Although this information has startled a few people, keep in mind the Epic Pass is not a GPS tracking system and cannot find you on the hill at any one given time. It doesn’t know what run you are on, but calculates your skiing totals. Besides, if you’re not interested in sharing that information you don’t have to opt into the system – and for that matter you probably don’t tweet anyway.