By Dan
We were living in Frisco, Colorado during the summer of 1995. That was the year this story took place.
Prior to the summer’s inception, we’d looked over a bunch of those books that help you find resort work during the summer. I wasn’t pretty enough to get us on a cruise ship – and Mark needed a wingman so he wasn’t going to do that alone. We ended up choosing Colorado, likely because Keystone, Breckenridge, Aspen and Vail were all in close proximity, and we figured someone was bound to hire us.
We left our place in Frisco intent on making a 1:00 appointment with human resources at the Ritz-Carlton in Aspen. We hadn’t been to Aspen yet but looked at the map and knew we had plenty of time to get there; we opted for the scenic route. On the map, the scenic route involved us taking Highway 70 to State Route 24 through Leadville and then north again on 82 up the ‘backway’ to Aspen. It was so simple, it almost didn’t require a map. Leadville was the first cool town we passed through. Did you know that it is the highest incorporated city in the United States? According to Wikipedia, it is situated at 10,152 feet above sea level, so don’t plan on running a 5K there until you’ve taken a few deep breaths.
After Leadville we continued our trek south toward State Route 82. Now it’s June and there is some snow on the ground still, but the weather is quite nice. Though we’re dressed quite nicely, it wasn’t cold enough for gloves or boots. We did see a sign or two indicating that Independence Pass was closed – but that was the only real sign that winter was dragging on. State Route 82 ended up being a bit smaller than SR 24, the road through Leadville, but it was still a nicely paved 2 lane road. Not much traffic – just beautiful views. Shortly after turning onto 82 we came upon another sign indicating Independence Pass was closed. It was a good thing we weren’t planning on going hiking.
A few miles farther up the road, we came to a gate that had apparently been blown closed and actually blocked the road. Mark stopped and I got out to put the arm of the gate back in place so we could continue our journey to Aspen. About 10 minutes more up the road and at a higher elevaation, we noticed that the snow plow had stopped plowing the shoulder, which created a wall of snow right next to the car. A few minutes later it was clear that the snowplow hadn’t finished clearing the other side of the road because the snow was now starting to encroach onto that lane. It was now going to be very tricky to pass on-coming cars if there wasn’t a wider area for passing coming up.
Moments later, the snow plow guy stopped plowing the snow on that side of the road altogether because the road was down to one lane with extremely tall walls of snow on either side of us. We were getting a bit nervous about falling snow – but knew we had to be getting past this soon. Just as it was getting a bit scary and crazy, we rounded a bend to see a giant wall of snow right in front of us. And there sat the snow plow – no workers in sight. So there we were, after having opened a gate that shut off the road, stuck between two 10′ walls of snow on either side of us and directly ahead of us an ice wall. It was then that we realized why we hadn’t seen much traffic over the last hour. And clearly if there had been a road sign now- it would have said, “Welcome To Independence Pass, Idiots!”
I’m sure someone, somewhere got quite a laugh to see two kids in a Pontiac driving frantically backward hoping to get back to civilization before one of the walls melted and landed on our car. To this day – it’s funny to think that we ran into a wall of ice on our way to get jobs at the most prestigious hotel in the Rockies. Boneheads unite!
