PART II
PHOTO: HORSESHOE PARK
THIRTY-NINE: (Ryan) “Day Before Thanksgiving”
We’d been in Estes Park for a month. A lot had changed. A lot hadn’t.
There were still thirteen of us, thanks to Jenna’s excellent care of Mom and Isaac. The conditions hadn’t exactly been ideal, but we woke up every day with the mantra, “It could be worse.”
We ended up being wrong about the Lake Estes dam. It didn’t give out that night. It gave out the next afternoon. It washed down Highways 34 and 36 and caused more damage than could be repaired in any short amount of time, and the snow wasn’t too far behind. Danny and Cameron went down Highway 36 with explosives to “make the water damage worse.” Together with the water, they rendered it impossible for anyone to get to Estes Park by that avenue.
There were now only three remaining ways into Estes Park, all to the west, and they all converged on Trail Ridge Road. Ute Trail went up from the south and peaked about halfway up Trail Ridge, but it could barely be considered an option as it was nothing more than a one-lane dirt path barely wide enough for a tricycle. And we weren’t too worried about these soldiers having tricycles.
Old Fall River Road cut up the mountains from the northeast side, meeting Trail Ridge Road at its summit in the Alpine Visitor Center parking lot. Old Fall River Road always closed at first snow because it was bordered by “avalanche alley.” Anyone foolish enough to go up or down that road from November to March usually died, either by avalanche or getting stuck. Once the first snow came, we weren’t worried about that road.
Our only remaining worry had been the main Trail Ridge Road. It typically was closed by December, but all the equipment to keep it open was kept at the top of the mountain, where helicopters would fly in with the road crews. It was also the ideal site for a military base. Similar to Hitler’s Eagle’s Nest in Germany.
We knew we were stuck here until spring, and even then, no matter which way we tried to go we’d have to pass the Alpine Visitor Center. If we were correct in our assumptions, and that was a base site, we had no idea how we’d pull off our exit, but that was at least five months from now. We had to survive winter first.
Fortunately, we received about ten feet of snow over a three-day period the last few days of October. Both the Old Fall River and Trail Ridge roads were completely shut by the fifth of November. No one was getting here by land. Not until spring.
The only way in now was by air and, as it turned out, the enemy forces used that method many times. It seemed every day we had a drone fly over and back, mostly in the afternoon, and helicopters descended into Estes Park regularly. Heckuva lot attention paid to one small town! Sam confirmed the drones were the same FOTROS ones they’d seen back in their bunker by Devil’s Lake.
Danny knew they were Iranian, one of the few types of drones that could do both recon and bombing. The American military had similar drones that Special Ops used. Danny described them as “nasty suckers.” We took his word for it. They were likely being monitored from Denver or Colorado Springs.
The helicopters, on the other hand, all seemed to come from the top of Trail Ridge Road. None of them ever headed the other direction. That confirmed our fears that there was a permanent patrol or two stationed up by the Alpine Visitor Center for the winter. The troops they flew in never seemed to search much beyond town. The first day they flew in was the last day we stayed in town. We couldn’t compete with their technology, dogs, and numbers for long.
We hadn’t seen a lot of other Americans ourselves. Maybe a dozen, at most. It’s possible some of them saw us while we were collecting supplies, but we had yet to speak to any of them, and we were convinced their numbers would dwindle with each subsequent troop visit. We knew we needed to get out of town.
Northwest of Estes Park, several trails ran near the Alluvial Fan at the base of Bighorn Mountain, one of the area’s longest chains of natural waterfalls. The aptly named Roaring River came down the fan out of the mountains and staircased into a low-lying basin, generally known as Horseshoe Park, which also contained the Sheep Lakes. The area was a popular feeding ground for elk and bighorn sheep and, as a result, mountain lions. The popular Lawn Lake Trail ascended the right side of the chain of falls. We knew that trail well.
We knew the fan’s ever-flowing river and falls would provide constant fresh water and have plenty of wildlife nearby. The area also had several large, bighorn-inhabited caves. We were intent on negotiating a lease with them for a few months. For better or worse, the fan sat right at the foot of Old Fall River Road, almost exactly a ten-mile drive down from the Alpine Visitor Center.
We found our cave on the right side of the falls, surrounded by thick woods and carved right into Bighorn Mountain. The sheep were reluctant to leave, but we arguably needed it more than they did. We worked it out. With two relatively obscure entrances, it was the perfect place to hide out for a few months.
The main entrance opened to the west, facing the Alluvial Fan and the summit of Old Fall River Road. We knew we’d have to conceal that entry more. It was pretty exposed to the passing trail. The “back” entry emerged onto a wraparound porch-like ledge, which could only be accessed by the Spiderman-like sheep or mountain lions. That ledge provided a nearly 180-degree view of Horseshoe Park, but it was only about five feet wide with a steep twenty-foot drop to the rocks below. It would be treacherous in winter, but it was a design feature hundreds of my Pinterest architecture “friends” would have enjoyed a few years ago.
We spent several nights over several weeks moving mattresses, carpet, blankets, car batteries, battery-powered space heaters, wood, water barrels, beams to reinforce the cave, and other supplies from various stores and homes in Estes Park. My architectural skillset finally made me of some value and, paired with Sam’s experience building the Dakota bunker with his dad, we resourcefully built our own “Man Cave.”
The supplies were easy to find in an abandoned town. It was getting in and out around the troop visits, and the nearly half-mile climb carrying supplies from the base of the Alluvial Fan, that was the challenge. But we brought anything we thought could be of use. We explored the stores, packed what we could, moved it out, and dragged it up to our cave.
Fully stocked, we then turned to hiding two of the trucks a few miles up the road. We went as far as we could in the snow that had already fallen and parked them under an old picnic shelter, deliberately collapsing it to cover the vehicles. No one would pass or look there in mid-winter, but we continued to take every precaution.
We pulled the best four-by-four we had, the new Ford, up into the woods about a half-mile from our cave. We attached a snowplow extension onto the front and spray-painted every inch of the truck white: exterior, hubcaps, wheels and all. We covered it with white tarps and put it in a position where it could be started and driven in a straight line down to Old Fall River Road, and used in an emergency to clear a path. With our gear in place we began the extensive process of covering every trace of our existence.