Boot Hill

Most ski mountains or at least all the Aspen ski mountains are studded with shrines.

Aspen Mountain has the Jerry Garcia shrine, Snowmass has the Hunter S. Thompson shrine, Buttermilk has the John Denver Shrine.

According to Sanctuaries in the Snow, The Shrines of Aspen/Snowmass, there are 30 known shrines on our mountains.

Known to whom? It all depends on who you know.

Believe me, there are more.

For example:

In August of 2005, Steve was working on Aspen Highlands Trail Crew. That summer a huge project was ongoing to put in a new lift, the Deep Temerity lift. The lift was going to open up a slew of new territory below the Grand Traverse and one of the many tasks of the trail crew was to cut these new runs.

This means taking chain saws into fantastically steep terrain and felling and cutting up very large trees.

Steve was doing so one day when the chain saw he was operating hit a knot and kicked back on him. Since he was cutting a particularly large log, he had an extra long blade on the chain saw so when it kicked back, instead of clearing his foot as it would have if he was running the regular blade, it caught his left foot right in the instep. He had heavy duty work boots on but still, we're talking a chain saw here.

He radio'd his co-workers and then proceeded to self-evacuate by hiking up a little less than 1000 feet to the work truck.

After a full recovery, with a couple of hiccups, one of Steve's co-workers created a shrine to Steve's injury, Boot Hill, and on Saturday, Steve took me to it. It's a little more than half way down G.L.E. (Greatest Line Ever) and consists of a bench with the offending chain embedded in it. Due to the unbelievable amounts of snow this winter, the chain was snow-covered but that didn't stop us from taking pictures. Steve also saved the bloody boot (yuck!) and he's going to add that to the shrine if I remind him to take it in.

I'll be glad to get it out of my shed.