Like a giant, dark specter of death rising over the Front Range foothills.
Crossroads of Life and Death - May 16, 2024
Photos and text by Dave Parsons
Rolling up to Morrison looking for a beautiful and peaceful hike among the Red Rocks, crazy traffic and blinking traffic signs alerted me to high school graduation ceremonies taking place at Red Rocks Amphitheater. Crazed high school teenagers en masse - bummer. Lines of traffic were snarled in Morrison and likely to clog the entrances to the park. Looking to escape the rat race, I changed destinations and redirected my path up Mount Vernon Canyon. Dodging downtown Morrison, I drove past the Pillar of Fire Church, the historic Cliff House and out of town. Skipping an amphitheater entrance, I parked instead at the nearby Alameda Parkway at Dinosaur Ridge, strapped on a pack and started up the hill.
Clear of any graduating masses, I hiked past a Jurassic aged dinosaur graveyard filled with caramel colored bones entombed in solid sandstone. Squished "Bronto Bulges," dinosaur foot prints protruded from under additional sedimentary layers. Continuing uphill past the small, 105 million year old rare, raptor track, the road turned eastwards and sliced though the ridge top. The exposed layers of geology housed a ball chair sized rocky concretion, curiously poking out the side of road cut like a giant eyeball. On the opposite side of the hogback, I waded through layers of tidal ripple marks left from the lapping shallow sea waters of the Western Interior Seaway and headed towards the Dakota Ridge Trailhead.
Below, semi trucks and SUVs noisily churned over the asphalt where a dinosaur highway once hosted sloshing stegosaurus and bounding Brontosaurus through shallow, sandy waters. As the dull roar of highway traffic crawled up the hillside, I zig-zagged past the switchbacks up to the ridge line. Looking past the junipers and dried skeleton of a Ponderosa pine, I peeked over the edge of the "Arthur Lakes Lookout." Looking down on the road I had just walked up I glanced across to the "eyeball" in the wall. In the distance Mount Morrison rose into a terrific blue sky as ecstatic graduates and their families plied their vehicles through the snaking roads towards Red Rocks.
Continuing back to the main trail, blue Larkspur flowers dotted the trail edge along with green Mountain Mahogany shrubs. Tough roots of juniper and Ponderosa trees squeezed through the cracks and pried layers of rock apart to find purchase along the ridge. Perched atop a pine on a seat of green needles, a Black-headed Grosbeak sang his morning melody.
Running this stretch of trail tests ones ankles and balance as the uneven path is strewn with jagged layers of sandstone erupting at odd angles. Part of the Mathews-Winters Park, the hogback runs north and south along the Front Range mountains, like a rough edge of paper after a mountainous pencil has been pushed through.
On either side of the ridge, highways parallel the hogback also running north and south. They were once ancient foot paths, turned into wagon roads and then high speed highways. Some historic buildings from the Old West, built along these paths through time are still standing. A stone barn constructed from the nearby Red Rocks remains planted in pastures near Mount Vernon Creek. The old Rooney Ranch with numerous historic buildings stands on the east side of the hogback with a few wandering cows watching the traffic of C-470. Nearby, a Ute meeting spot, the Colorow Council Tree, an old Ponderosa pine over 500 years old still remains rooted in the rocks. The ranch’s spring waters were also a favorite spot for the Ute to bathe and sooth old bones centuries before the Rooney’s plumbed its waters. More multiple lines of dinosaur tracks, millions of years old and uncovered by recent road building, remain squished into the ancient shoreline above the ranch.
The noisy race track of Interstate-70 traffic caught my attention.
Continuing up the path the braided trail separates into a path for mountain bikes and those on foot. Reaching a high point, I looked out over a very green, Green Mountain. Clay and coal mines are carved like stair steps into its sides. The Dinosaur Ridge visitors center and Rooney Ranch sit in miniature along a snaking tree lined creek. Walking further along the crest of the ridge, I stopped again and looked north. Traffic headed to and from the mountains on I-70 was frantic. Jake brakes from semi trucks merged with motor noise of drivers "flooring-it" up the hill. I watched drivers with reckless abandon weave in and out of large haulers and busses. Many vehicles were slowing to a crawl, downshifting as they hit the steep incline. Speeding vehicles, not wanting to slow for anything would swing from the slow lanes back to the fast, dodging any lumbering slowness. Impressed by the racetrack of activity, I took a photo to document the crazy scene. The Mother Cabrini Shine with the 22 foot tall marble statue of Jesus, carved in 1954 looked down from his high perch on the Mount of the Sacred Heart at the scrambling rat race of humanity. For a few minutes, five to be precise, I hiked carefully with my eyes again on the jagged path.
The loud concussion hit me first, knocking me out of my revelry of trailside tracking. Stopping with a jolt, I jerked my head upwards towards the left and looked out over the green expanse to a dark, black cloud rising into sky over the highway. Just five minutes ago, I had photographed the very spot where a stalled tanker truck was parked on the roadside and now a pillar of black smoke. The explosion sounded like cannon fire as it rifled across the valley. Flames spilled out of the tanker truck and washed across the pavement. A silver or white SUV was buried in the back of the fully engulfed taker as the conflagration quickly absorbed the smaller vehicle.
Drivers risked driving through the wall of flames and fuel.
As fuel sloshed across the sloping road forming a fiery wall, a SUV and Fed-Ex van drove through the flames. Flaming tires on the SUV eventually went out as black smoke followed the van out of the orange wall, the driver continuing on with blackened rear doors. A yellow Jeep driver smartly stopped a few yards in front of the flaming wall as smaller explosions began to echo across the valley as tires burst and perhaps as smaller fuel tanks heated up and exploded.
The Jeep backed up slowly and decided to just do a u-turn and weave back through stopped traffic. In the meantime, burning fuel flowed down through a culvert in between the east and west lanes of traffic and eventually reached under the east bound lanes of the highway, sliding down towards Mount Vernon Creek.
Run the gauntlet, or turn around. Dozens of drivers gambled and won, driving through the towering flames.
A Red-Tailed hawk circled above the disaster, just out of reach of the smoke. The median was burning and a mushroom cloud of smoke rose into the sky as dozens of vehicles drove past in the east bound lanes with only one vehicle stopping and dangerously turning around as others zoomed by. As massive flames spread to all sides of the highway, east bound drivers sped through the gauntlet of tall flames and choking smoke. For mountain drivers, it was just another hazard - aim your vehicle through the flaming uprights like an apocalyptic game. With flames blowing over all the lanes, a UPS driver hauling a double semi trailer, threaded the needle driving through the middle lane along with a flock of smaller vehicles.
At 9:22 AM, the SUV collided with the parked tanker. At 9:28 the police arrived and blocked all traffic. Responding fire engines had to navigate the haphazard line of traffic and arrived at 9:33 AM. By then most of the fuel had burned away. Yet dangerously, flames would settle and almost disappear on the hillside and then suddenly rise up all at once as a gust of wind would, in a snap, revive the dying embers. White smoke poured from the tanker as emergency services sprayed water. According to the Jefferson County Sherrif's Office, "paramedics also transported the driver of the tanker truck to a hospital." Flames were out by 9:43 and a charred tanker truck remained, collapsed onto a skeleton of an unrecognizable vehicle as fire fighters continued to pour water onto the remains. Multiple hoses snaked around the blackened and wet pavement. Emergency services personnel stood around the remains looking into the metal frame as traffic backed up for miles in both directions.
The tanker driver would be able to drive more roads, however the SUV driver was killed, probably instantly. Ironically, at the same time, high school kids down the road were happily attending their high school graduation. So many decisions and moments in time can forever change lives. Witnessing the days whiplash of tragic and happy events represented such a short physical but profound moment in time. They emphasized the fragility of life. My mind wandered through time and other events that had taken place in this historic location through the centuries and millennia.
The area has always been a crossroads through time. It was once a dinosaur graveyard and highway along an ancient shoreline. Millions of years later, Ice age animals including Columbian Mammoths migrated through searching for greener pastures. Atlatl and spear toting Stone Age peoples hunting massive herds of bison camped along the nearby rivers and creeks and sheltered along the south facing red rocks. The town of Morrison sprang up like a dandelion, sprouting mines and rail road arms as the Old West grabbed hold of the hogbacks. Eventually, Native paths were replaced by dusty wagon roads to be paved over by huge highways. Today, nearby gravel pits grind down and eat up entire mountains as fields of sprawling homes expand exponentially along the noisy highways. Always changing, I wonder who and what will be traveling through this area in a hundred, a thousand or perhaps a million years. Use your time wisely.
