A made-up day. Got up around 5:30, put on some clothes, walked down to the admin building, made some coffee, sent out a blog, caught up on email.... Car battery dead but OLT is used to that happening all the time so they just rode me up a charger and it turned right over.
Decided to drive to Leadville...on the way, studied the maps, and decided to go home over Mosquito Pass....a 4 wheel drive road that extends from 7th street Leadville to Alma on the road between Breckenridge and Fairplay. I knew the lower part of the Mosquito Pass Road, having used cross country skis to make tracks this past winter. So I headed up and up...
But that did not happen to the road, however, which was the width of my vehicle in places. A road of rocks...granite boulders...ain't no biking lane here....
It was just around the bend on the photo below that I came to a snow drift whose depth I could not fathom and over which no tires had ever passed. A sense of relief because I was beginning to doubt if the Explorer was really up to it...e.g. what is its history on tipping over on high mountain passes?
On the way back down I stopped at an old mining operation....tailings from mining tunnels dot the lower hillsides. This was The Diamond Mine. Don't know what they found....probably I could find out from histories and old records in the town hall. For now it's just stuff rusting away under a hot sun. Oh well, time to take another road home (hey how about I-70?)
