I came as a young man, refugee from the plains.

Looking for higher ground.

Where the sun shines through the rain Where the mountain folks & the old cowpokes found a piece of mind.

I guess loving Mother Nature makes you naturally kind.

Colorado Everywhere I go, I'm in your shadow.

You're calling to me.

Colorado The sun's melting the snow.

Making the river flow to the sea.

As the highest and most dramatic features of the natural landscape.

Mountains have an extraordinary power to evoke the sacred.

The ethereal rise of a ridge.

And myst the glint of moonlight on an icy face.

Flare of gold on a distant peak.

Such glimpses of transcendent beauty can reveal our world as a place of unimaginable mystery and splendor.

My name is Jim Phillips, and I'm a member of the Ute Trail Muzzle loaders from Woodland Park, Colorado.

We're in the mountains in the middle of what is the wilderness of Colorado, and we're at a historic encampment of Buck Skinners who are portraying the fur trade period of our country's history.

The fur trade era was between 1825 and 1840, and it died out because silk came in to be used for the hats in Europe.

And the price of beaver went down.

Okay.

Anybody want a fire?

These are the Rocky Mountains, and this is where most of your mountain men came to hunt, to trap.

And they lived up here.

Original mountain men had very little.

I mean, a little sugar, a little lead, a little powder, a little salt, a little coffee, maybe just the basis and the rest of it.

It's what they could glean from the land.

And a lot of our people try to get back to that level, living off the land as our forefathers did, as the mountain men that preceded us.

The last time I was down there, the place was lousy with chiggers.

Oh, is that right?

I forget when I'm at a rendezvous and I set up camp for, say, 10 to 15 days, and I have nothing but my tent and my accouterments of the 1830s.

Then you live the 1830s.

What I most enjoy about rendezvous is the camaraderie, the meeting of different people from different parts of the country.

And each person brings their own form of history, and they are what they portray.

They may be a trade r. They may be a buck skinner.

They may be a trapper, a cook.

Now, I started out just making biscuits, just like a Girl Scout or a Boy Scout would do.

And from there I progressed.

And I have learned that cakes and pies and cookies and and breads and all types of things can be made outside using a campfire, of course, just using the coals from that campfire.

But it's an art of patience.

It does take a long time.

I enjoy cooking, I enjoy pleasing people, and that's one of my ways, is through food.

It gives me something to do because I don't do knife and tomahawk.

I'm not an Indian.

I'm a white woman.

I'm from the East and I'm from the 1700s.

25 to 30 5 to 3.

Mountain manning is much different from camping in that you're just not out camping and having a good time.

You're learning about history.

A lot of people get into the weaponry more than the clothing, some people into the cooking and some people into the competition, the shooting.

I think probably the thing that sticks out in my mind , the one experience that's the this the very best for me, are those little moments in time when you suddenly come to feel that kind of shiver that that just runs from your shoulders down to your toes, and you and you think to yourself, you know, I'll bet this is I'll bet this is just a little bit of what they felt in the 1750s.

In the 1820s, in the mountains.

You know, maybe there's nobody around here.

Maybe I have stepped back through a door in time, and I'm actually experienced the sights and the smells and the feelings and perhaps the fears that they had.

And as my wife often says, I think you were probably born 200 years too late.

I want to be a mountain man.

Bartender says, well, son, you can't just you can't just come out to the West here and announce you want to be a mountain man.

It takes years to become a mountain man.

No, no, I want to be a mountain man.

And I gotta be it soon, because the fur trade is coming to an end.

He says.

Well.

There are 54 peaks in Colorado, over 14,000ft high.

They include Elbert, Creston, needle, Lenny Wilson, the Maroon Bells, capital, Little Bear, Blanca, Grazed Toys, and Evans close to Denver, Pike's Peak.

I'm Jim Gary's I'm here because I have climbed the Colorado 14 as more than anyone else.

I've done all of them ten times.

All but a few 11 times and half of them 12 times.

I've been standing on tops of the fourteeners already.

When you could actually read the numbers on tops of the wings of planes that were flying by into canyons between the peaks, it's kind of impressive to to have walked up to a point that's higher than the airplanes are flying, I guess.

Getting on top of the peak is a very experience.

You literally feel like you have the world at the bottom of your feet.

And this this feeling to me is, is never diminished in thinking I was there.

The mountain cannot frighten one who was born on it.

Okay.

You ready to go?

All right, let's hit it.

Good.

Yeah.

Get the outrigger out.

There you go.

Get it out again.

It's very liberating.

There are certain places that you cannot go in a wheelchair out here.

I can go anywhere.

I can go anywhere in the mountain.

You are.

Living with a disability is not always an easy thing.

And the more that we can be involved in mainstream activities, I think these are.

It is to do anything.

It's fine, you know, it gives you such a sense of freedom because you can go just about anywhere you want.

Just because you can't walk or you can't dance doesn't mean you can't enjoy, you know, living, enjoy life.

I think there's so much out there that people take for granted.

And like I said, just because you have a disability doesn't mean that there are limitations.

There are a lot of people out there with disabilities who have not tried skiing.

And believe me, skiing can give you a tremendous outlook on life.

It can give you a chance to go out and enjoy a very dynamic, challenging sport.

First of all, you are a person and secondly, you are a person with a disability.

And when they're doing something as dynamic as skiing, the disability literally disappears.

It disappears.

And many of them have told me that when they come down to the bottom of the mountain and they either get out of the sky and get into the wheelchair, or they take if their stand up skier and take their skis off the disability returns then.

But until then it has vanished.

It's freedom for me.

I used to think that there would be no way that I could enjoy the sports my family has enjoyed for so long since we found this.

It's totally different.

I love it.

All right, they will have fun.

Okay.

These guys, they're good.

They'll take care of you.

It's hard to say what makes Winter Park program the disabled program so successful.

There's a lot of components that go into that.

I think bottom line is the staff, they have fun, they make it fun, and they make it fun for the individuals that come up here and learn how to ski .

And I think, you know, it may sound like cliche or corny, but, you know, we're one big family here and we do.

We have a job to do, and we try to do it the best way we can.

And I think it's it's very successful.

Good turns.

How's that feel?

All right.

You take them out on snow, and the sliding movement gives them that grace of of movement, the feeling of being able to run again or they've never run before.

Now they're running, or they feel that wind in their face.

They're out there with other people.

It gave me a sense of purpose, what I'm doing here.

I think that's really critical for you to move on and and just go out and do everything that, that you want to do.

If anyone is capable of wheeling into the office or walking in there.

Indeed, a candidate for our program.

I got two legs, but you don't need two legs to ski.

When they begin to ski and ski well, they just explode with excitement.

Oh, what a run!

What a rush.

We settle down together, never tiring of each other.

Only the two of us.

The mountain and I. I think.

How we differ considerably from regular tourists mines is we are a real mine.

This is a working mine.

And we're real miners.

There's always something different going on.

A new problem to solve.

And it's not for the wea k. It's for the ones that like a challenge.

People go to school years to study geology to find this kind of stuff, and even then it's a very hit and miss business.

High risk.

However, I cheat little bit.

I used my mother.

She she's very good at finding water.

Water wells with a willow.

And we found out she could not only find water, but you could find gold veins.

So we walk around a mountain with a divining rod, and she finds exactly where it is.

And we dig a hole.

There's a vein.

That's how we find this stuff.

My name is Alvin Moss.

They call me al.

I'm a third generation miner from this area, and we're almost two miles out of the town of Idaho Springs, west of Trail Creek at the Phoenix Gold mine.

It was named the Phoenix back in the 1800s by some unknown miner.

And in is quite prophetic because the phoenix is the birds that rose out of the ashes and mythology.

And this mine's done the same thing twice, this history as rose out of nothing and made guys millionaires.

And we may be pulling off a third time here in the future.

The rock itself you're seeing here is ancient ocean bottom, about 2 billion years ago, lifted up due to plate tectonic movement and all those various things, and became a mountain range, changed from a sediment to a metamorphic rock.

And then in very recent geological times when dinosaurs were wondering around down here, this popped apart and was charged with mineral.

Probably scared the dinosaurs in my history as a miner, which goes way back.

I first initial mining job was at climax, Colorado up near Leadville.

I worked my way up into being a hangout man, which had a pretty high fatality rate, but I knew I was invincible and I proved it by staying alive.

Then I mined Uranium and Utah during the uranium boom, which was like Wild West carrying six shooters, and we had a few shootouts now and in and things that were claimed jumping all kinds of wild stuff.

And then I mined barillium .

We mined silver when the price of silver sky high prior in 1983.

And now that gold is doing pretty good, we're doing some work up here.

There was an old miner that came from.

He was a Kansas farmer until 1927, and then he sold his farm for some money, and he came out here and became a miner.

He bought some mines and he worked for years.

Well, this old guy was pretty darn good at it.

And I knew him when I was a little boy.

After he passed on, I remembered he told me about a mine across the road from the Phoenix here called the Comstock, and I hadn't remembered everything he told me about it.

But one night I was coming out of this hole.

I was sitting there with the summertime.

I just really exhausted, and I was just trying to relax and I was relaxing in the dark.

I had my light off.

He appeared to me and he told me about the whole across the road, and he told me that I had to open it up and might make me a lot of money, and he told me what was going to be in there.

You know what I'd see?

I so I pulled a few thousand tons of rock out of this ancient hole.

It was done in the 1870s.

It was in 1000ft workings in it.

And I still got everything in there.

Was just like he told me, that ghost now and that kind of verification of a ghost talk.

I go by facts, you know?

And to me, maybe a ghost isn't scientific, but if a ghost tells me this, it's in there.

There's got to be a reason that happened, isn't it?

I'm in the tourist business now, and it was sort of an accident that I got into it.

People kept coming up and asking me what I was doing, and one day I realized I was cutting into my actual my time because I was talking to many people.

So I started charging them and now it's growing.

I've got people from all over the world keep coming here.

Repeat customers, believe it or not, and telling others about it.

And I meet some neat people.

It's a lot of fun.

I think I would do it even if I didn't charge them just as long as I could afford it, because it's kind of fun to meet all these neat people from all over the world.

There's a serenity that you don't get elsewhere.

I've experienced this myself.

You know how peaceful it is in here and we don't have a lot of equipment running.

There's something about it that's so relaxing.

Even though you're working with your body.

Your mind was elsewhere while your body was just doing this work and you never didn't get bored.

It's so peaceful.

There was a time on this fair land when the railroad did not run, when the wild, majestic mountains stood alone against the sun.

There's 2000 bike riders here for the weekend.

This has been going a lot longer than most road races in America.

That makes it very unusual.

It's been going on for over 20 years in this race actually is probably one of the best races, road race and mountain bike race in the United States 25 years ago.

There's a young fellow named Tom Mayer that was a bike rider, and his brother was an engineer on the train.

So Tom would challenge his brother to race to Silverton.

As Tom finally got old enough to beat his brother.

It was kind of a big deal.

And we'll have 2000 competitors this year and most of them will be the train, but the train will beat some of them.

Well, the Durango to Silverton is real prestigious race to win.

It's one of the most difficult and spectacular races of the whole year in the United States.

The passes for one thing to Silverton is quite difficult, and that's really the essence of road racing is riding in the big mountains like that.

And there's very few roads like that in the United States, you know, big long climbs like you have in the tour de France.

And that's why I think it's one of the best road races in the United States.

And there's fast ascents and real hard, steep climbs.

So the two of them put together just makes for a great weekend.

So far.

It's your treat.

It really isn't anything to compare it to.

You have to realize you're not going to breathe.

You're going to have a lot of pain and be glad that it's over.

But that's fun.

It's just beautiful here.

People are nicer.

They talk to you.

They wave back.

There were some really tough climbs and it got real slow.

And for me, I had two speeds stop and go.

So it was just keep going and try to ignore the pain as much as you can.

I love torment, pain.

It's beautiful up here.

I love it here.

I like it a lot.

I like the challenge of the racing at altitude.

I like the hill climbing.

I like the courses.

They're a lot of fun.

This is the first time I've been here, so I think it's beautiful.

The hills just keep going and going and going.

You don't have hills like this in Iowa.

Not like this at all.

And when I come out here and I get up and down these mountains, it makes me feel so good to have it done and to be able to say that I did it.

There's something about being on top of those mountains that you can't compare it to anything.

So the mountains are beautiful, you ride hard and nothing could be better than being on top coming down.

This certainly rewarding to see people right into Silverton.

I mean, they're very tired, but they have a real sense of accomplishment for many of them.

It's a personal challenge to be able to do this right.

I'm going to stay here for as long as I can.

I've never lived up in the mountains, and every day I get up and I just look around.

It's just like, man, this is this is sweet.

90 pounds of a pound of rubber.

Two hills, just the mountains, like his daddy used to do.

Early in the morning at the break of day, he asked me for a five note him with it.

He did say, take this, my darling, for the damage I have done.

You may have a daughter or you may have a son.

Now, if you have a daughter, bounce her on your knee.

If you have a son take the bastard out to ski, sing a 90 pounds of rook, sack a pound of grub or two hill shows the mountains like his daddy used to do.

We used to sing that song all the time.

When we'd march, we'd start singing 90 pounds of rook sack.

It's our favorite song.

It's.

It's our theme song.

No doubt about it.

I'm Max Peters.

I was in the 10th Mountain Division for 2 or 3 years during the war.

I was here just before the war ended.

In a year after the war ended in the 10th Division.

I was every rank that exists from a buck private up to six stripes, which is the first sergeant.

It was actually started by a fellow named Many Dole, and many Dole decided that we had better do something to get ready in case we have to do some mountain fighting.

So he drew up all these plans for the 10th Division, and then just bugged President Roosevelt until he finally got a hearing, and he demanded that President Roosevelt start the 10th Division.

He called it the ski troops or mountain troops at that time.

And they wanted a place that really had good mountains and a lot of snow and cold weather, so that they could be real mountain troops as well as ski troops.

And almost all of our training was at camp Hale, and we just fell in love with Colorado.

That was our state.

We loved it.

Before the war, there were probably about maybe at the most 30,000 people skiing in the United States.

Now it's up closer to 30 million, I would imagine.

I would say that the individuals who are in the 10th Mountain Division were absolutely instrumental in the full development of skiing in Colorado.

Almost every area you can mention has somebody there, either as the manager or starting it, who was a 10th Mountain Division guy.

I don't know the exact numbers, but I would say of the 10,000, maybe 1000 of them were originally from Colorado.

The other 9000, I would guess maybe 4000 of them.

Like did like me.

I came back out to live in Colorado or else out in the mountains somewhere.

We had this tremendous feeling of camaraderie of our people with this lovely scenery, with this lovely country, with the light snow, with all of our skiing interests and with all of our great buddies out here.

When we got into combat, there were more people from the 10th mountain that had head in front injuries than any other group.

It's because our guys stuck their heads up.

When one of their buddies was shot, they immediately went out to get him.

We were from Colorado.

We claimed we were because we had trained out here, and we adopted it as our state and we just loved it out here.

We loved what we had done out there, and we felt that we could do anything with no matter what, because we were in the United States mountain troops, we were in the ski troops, and we could do anything and we could win the war.

And we did.

Oh, beautiful for spacious skies, for amber waves of grain.

For purple mountain majesties above the fruited plain.