Piling on Granite - a photo on Flickriver

Piling on Granite

            Did they have to haul these granite building materials on trains from quarries down below... or did they look  around and pick them up, ready to use? I didn't find any lumber around this structure but maybe it all blew away to Kansas. These guys, Al and Steve, wondered why cinders from steam engine exhausts were deposited around here as if the minor breeze wasn't whipping around them. I seem to have gotten up here without dying. Egad, even in the summer of Trump\Pruett warming, there is still snow up here even though aimed at the skinny sun. This foundation is located up the hill behind the sign. I suspect that because it commands a view down the valley east, it might have been a tourist pavilion, something to lure riders to their station, hotel and diner atop Corona. 

"Just because your head is hard, don't take it for granite."

You probably thought I was done in by Corona summit if not a stoll up above here for a valley shot of California soot hanging in the air. King Lake is way down in the valley, scooped by glaciers ahead. Other lakes setteled down in holes west of here.  Hey California, declare yourself a disaster zone then come and retrieve your leftover trees. We will work on ours. Swaths of beetle-kill Lodgepole pine are being cut down slope west of here. As always, global warming is what has allowed the beetle to elevate their range as if it were another hoax.  

This is one of the few times I have been energized in Trump's Global Warming pox and California burning this summer. We can smell all of California right here and it ain't cheese and whine. I have a Gore-tex jacket over my shirt. I figured that I'd show this as proof as to why I wore pants. There are also masonry constructions above Needles Eye tunnel. I might call Colorado RailRoad Museum in Golden in a search for answers I have yet to find. The pass sign suggested that we were at the top  but here we are up the slope and higher country. Far above here is a low rock wall and hunting pit used by the Paleoindians, perhaps before early Shoshones fractured into tribes. Archaelogists found similar spots on Vail Pass, Colorado. 

It has been ages since I have been up here and my last time, I drove from the East Portal to the main Berthoud Pass highway on the west. I drove over the redwood trestles in my car. They seem a little sketchy at this point and there is no way to get over the route except for foot. Al Pace offered me a ride up and I accepted immediately. Boy has the pass route deteriorated since behemoth standard gauge articulated Mallet steam engines pounded their way up grade and trestle a century ago. 

What a dandy place for a railroad! Whackos in Colorado strung steel to mountainous mineral riches. When finished, D&RGW operated through Moffat tunnel below us and big coal mines near Somerset and Paonia on the Western Slope even though it was previously D&SL RR (Denver &  Salt Lake RR) that inspired the tunnel after years of winter snow fighting campaigns over the Hill Division on the Continental Divide. Coal shipments will be taking a major hit if we want to come even close to global warming commitments, sans the idiota right. Denverites were always envious of Southern Wyoming and wanted their own transcontinental route to fuel its growth. D&SL RR operated the big standard gauge arrticulated Mallets over to the Western Slope and ran many trains over the divide whenever open. Find images of the station, Corona and Arrow, Colorado on the Denver Public Library site, pretty astounding!

Taken on: August 15, 2018

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Piling on Granite

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