Have you ever been shocked at learning something about one of your parents that completely surprised you? Something you could never have imagined them having done? Decades after my father's death, I was astonished when I discovered some black and white photos from the 1930s that revealed a side of my father that I never would have imagined, something that he had never talked about.
In the late 1930s, my dad visited his cousin Jake Jauch in Colorado where Jake was a U.S. Forest Ranger stationed in what is now the Uncompahgre Wilderness Area. Before that, it had been called the Big Blue Wilderness because it encompassed the Big Blue River watershed. Of course, in the 1930s there were no designated wilderness areas yet, so it was simply the Uncompahgre National Forest, located five miles northwest of the quaint Colorado town of Lake City and ten miles east of Ouray, with elevations ranging from 8400 feet to 14,309 feet. Uncompahgre, a name given by the Ute Indians, has been translated variously as "red water spring" and "hot water." In fact, a public hot springs pool still exists in Ouray. The area is also known as the "Switzerland of America," and several decades ago, my family hosted a foreign exchange student, Luca, from Carpi, Italy, which is in the extreme northern part of Italy near Switzerland. Luca, upon seeing this area of Colorado, remarked that it did indeed resemble the Alps of Switzerland.
Uncompahgre Peak (14,309 feet) is seen in the photo below with its unusual broad, flat, slightly tilted summit which falls away almost vertically on three sides as much as 1500 feet, a landmark visible from far away.
Its fourth side slopes gently and is inviting to many hikers, and views from atop Uncompahgre Peak display a vast wilderness of towering rock castles and sweeping ridges that form some of the finest scenery in the state as seen in these photos I took from the top and featuring the nearby predominant peaks of Wetterhorn (14,015 feet) and Matterhorn (13,546.) These two Swiss names recount the area's "Switzerland of America" nickname.
The views in every direction are outstanding!
Back to my story about Dad's visit in the 1930s. Jake and his wife, Elma, lived in this Forest Service cabin and horse barn...
Jake told me all of this information when I and my young sons visited him and Elma decades after his retirement. At that time he encouraged me to backpack the valley and ascend the peak and gave me a map to reach the cabin which is where the road ends and the trail begins. We drove that road and camped at the campground adjacent to the cabin. My younger son was affected by the altitude during the night, but though he felt better in the morning, we didn't want to risk backpacking with him at this altitude. Instead we hiked a few miles to beautiful Slide Lake, so named because a landslide had formed it (Jake obviously had a wealth of info about the area!)...
Below is a photo of Dad and Jake at our house in Chicago back in the 1960s. Jake had me drive him all through the neighborhood so he could see all his old haunts from when he grew up in Chicago before college and his subsequent forestry career. He proudly told me how his brother had worked and put him through college, and after Jake graduated and began working, he put his brother through college. His brother, Max, still lived in the old neighborhood.
Back to the 1930s now. Jake took Dad to the top of Uncompahgre Peak on horseback. I'm not sure how far the horses were able to go back then, but the trail to the top back then was probably still solid ground. Here's a shot of Dad and Jake as they began their trip from the cabin. As the local ranger, one of Jake's jobs was to go the the top and change out the sign-in sheets signed by those who had scaled the peak. All 54 of Colorado's 14'ers (peaks of 14,000 feet or more altitude) have cylindrical metal tubes with forms inside for visitors to sign when they achieve the summit. The entire top of this mountain is now friable so all visitors have to hike to the top -- there is no way to climb the sides due to the disintegrating rock. I wonder if Dad signed the sheet since he was up there? Len and I did!
Going up on horseback wasn't possible in 1993 when I backpacked here because the upper 1/2 mile of the peak trail was all loose rock that had broken apart as seen in this photo as we scrambled up the talus slope. Here's Len relaxing on the loose rock...
I'm not sure what month my dad rode there with Jake, but obviously there was still snow in the higher elevations.
Dad never took me fishing, but obviously Uncle Jake took Dad fishing! Easy since their cabin was built along the bank of the Big Blue River and obviously fishing was very good back then...
And here's proof that Uncle Jake was still fishing in 1970 when we visited...
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