Vererans Day Treck!

On the night of October 18, 1943 a B-17 "Flying Fortress" and a crew of eight went down in a fiery crash into the mountainside of Stormy Peaks near Pingree Park, Colorado.
The men that died that night: Richard M. Creamer of Ohio; Joseph R. Arnold of California; Warren M. Dean of Seattle, Andrew H. Christensen of Wisconsin; William N. Cook of Texas; Robert J. Hopkins of New York, Carl E. Hamre of Iowa; and Philip Doddridge of Colorado.

I joined a group of five others and hiked out to the crash site to review the 65 year old remains. From Fort Collins, it's about an hour and forty-five minute drive to Pingree Park. From the park, you can hike to the site (if you know where to go!)

We started out by the park at an altitude of around 8,880 feet.

There was three inches of new snow; It would be difficult to find the crash site in the snow!

We climbed up another 1,400 feet and with the help of our GPS, we found what we were looking for! Here's one of the 1,200-hp Wright R-1820-97 Cyclone turbocharged radial piston engines.

We found pieces like this scattered all over the mountainside. Although most of the aluminum was carted off by local residents, there were still some recognizable items left after all these years.

Here is part of the wing section. We ate lunch on top of the wing.

Here is one of the B-17's electrically retractable landing gears.

Here is another engine. We searched around and found all four engines in the snow. We didn't see any other hikers out today, probably because of the snow. On the way back, a blizzard started coming in from the south so we got the heck out of there ASAP!

Heart of a Giant

On this day I hiked up to the top of the Horsetooth!

Here's the view looking east

The Native Americans legend is that an evil giant roamed this area. The giant was killed by a warrior who cut out the giant's heart and then slashed it. The remaining rocks are parts of the giant's heart. Of course the white folks thought it looked more like horseteeth so they named it horestooth rock. It is now the symbol of Fort Collins.

See the teeth marks on the left of the Fort Collins logo?

Some kind of rodent lives near the gums!

Between the teeth, looking down and westward. On a clear day, you should see Pikes Peak. Not today!

There was some snow in the shaded areas. The altitude here was about 7,200 feet.

These deer saw me before I saw them!

Happy to say, I made it back home safe!

Bobcat, Scat!

This morning we went on a naturalists' walk at a place called Bobcat Ridge Natural Area.

There is a picture of a bobcat we didn't see this morning.

Here is Susan, our Master Naturalist volunteer, telling us that there are so many volunteers on this walk this morning we will probably scare off any wildlife that would normally be seen! ...but we could look at animal scat and figure out what animals recently tip-toed through this area.

"What's the biggest piece you ever saw?"

Oh, look! I found some! It's bobcat!

"I'm giving it an f/5 at EV-1 !"

Bobcat Scat!