Songline for Wolf Creek Pass
 

You'll know you're almost home
when you reach that pull out in the road,
the one where you put your chains on -
or take them off.
Immediately after is the last bridge
that goes over the Rio Grande.
The river is just a creek here,
headwaters a few miles away
90 degrees due west
at the Continental Divide,

Big up country starts now!

Gear down here and start to gather speed.
Consider the laws of classical physics:
Force equal mass times acceleration.
The area under a curve -
defined by topography and road.
Vectors become a calculus of place.
And in those days, that road was narrow -
two lanes, no guardrails.
The mountain demanded that physics turn to dance -
A syncopated rhythm, improvisational jazz beat.

Up ahead now, there's a semi,
going far too slow.
And I have a record to break.
Besides, I never cared much for brakes.
In the mountains,
use your gears!

Don't burn out going down.
Don't brake going up.

Swing out and around
into that outer lane,
tires skittering near edge -
sharp-curve-drive-through-the-fear
1,000 foot drop off !
Pay it no mind.
Keep your eyes where you want your tires to go.
You are staying on the road!

Then swing back in,
smooth and easy.
It was a riff done by girl and car,
road and mountain -
accelerating into those curves,
not moving the way fear demanded.
Fear would have you look over the edge,
stand on your brakes,
skid out of control,
spin over and down.

The trucker flashes his lights, blinking
ON OFF! ON OFF!
TWICE - in admiration -
I lift one hand from the wheel, turn
and blow him a kiss.

But the road claimed my attention
like a jealous lover.
You learn to respect the pass,
listen to its demands
after 7 years of travel -
sometimes in winter blizzards,
sometimes in sudden washouts of summer rain.
And don't forget the occasional avalanche
thrown in just to see if you're paying attention.
Wolf Creek always has its moods.
And so do I.

Today, I am in love
with this pass, these mountains, these curves
these spring wildflowers,
which have come out just for me, waving,
as I take those sharp turns effortlessly, flying,
my small Subaru purring like a great cat,
sure-footed
hugging the road tight
with the embrace of that lover,
returned home after a long absence.

A few days later, sitting in the faculty lounge,
I'll boast to a friend - a professor and a librarian,
as well as a philosopher and fellow poet
but above all, my main competition
in a serious contest -
Who could do Wolf Creek - the Best!

"Did the entire pass averaging 50 miles an hour,"
I'd say casually.
He'd flung his coffee cup down with a sound
like a gauntlet being flung!
"Prove it!"
So I did.

Looked him straight in the eye,
took a long drag on my cigarette and said
"Let's go!"
A couple of college teachers cutting class
on a warm spring day,
leaving behind our students like shadows
in empty classrooms.

My friend had given me the music for Wolf Creek -
Jean Luc Ponte’s incredible jazz violin
It happened to be in my cassette deck
the day I drove the Wolf Creek Invitational.
I hope in return, I gave him good company,
talking poetry and the philosophy of road advisories -
A couple of kids dragging the main strip,
Highway 160 between Pagosa Springs and South Fork
showing off how well WE BELONGED there,
turning a little Subaru
into a living thing
that danced through the mountains.

The real kids behind us
were going back to the city in search of better things.
We'd already found them,
topping the summit of that pass -
Wolf Creek!
Elevation: ten thousand, eight hundred and sixty feet.
Chain law
no longer
in effect!

And then the fire fell off the end of Earl's Cee-gar and dropped on down sorta rolled around and lit in the cuff of Earl's pants and burned a hole in his sock yeah it sorta set him right on fire ...

and Earl had to wake-up Leroy so he could see the damnest wreck in years.

nice! you captured it.

you have to have driven wolf creek pass a few times to feel what she's talking about. Even at the speed limit, if there's a little snow on the road, the uninitiated will leave pucker marks on your car seat.

hey marichiko, did you ever drive over Yankee Boy Basin?

Thank you, Noodle. And I was talking about the Pass in the old days before they improved the road. Now Wolf Creek is down right boring! You have to go over Red Mountain, instead, if you want to have a little fun.

Yankee Boy Basin? Of course! As well as Imogene, Land's End off the Colorado Plateau, and let's not forget the Devil's Staircase in Utah (although I did that one in a Toyota 4wd drive truck, not a Suburu). ;)

Thanks for the compliment.

I mentioned YBB because my dad took us there in a station wagon one time when I was a kid. It remains in the top two terrifying driving experiences of my life.

I don't offroad intentionally -- it's usually because I'm trying to get to a hunting spot or because I'm lost :lol: You crazy kids and your jeeps.

here are pics, so the rest can know what you're missing in your flatlands :)

Yankee Boy is a trip! That's where I learned the trick of keeping my eyes where I want the tires to go. Works like a charm. If I keep my eyes where I'm AFRAID my tires will go, damned if they don't start to wander in that direction!

In that second picture, it's funny - I'd be more freaked out by driving under that overhang than I would be driving at the base of the cliff. Even though the overhang protects you from rockslides, which are much more likely than the whole cliff breaking off.

The thing is, imagine being oncoming traffic. That's where you pray the snowmelt hasn't loosened the edge of the road significantly.

The wetness on the road in the first pic is urine.

mari, got any wolf creek pics? all the ones I found on GIS didn't do it justice.

Wolf creek pass on the way to Montrose and ultimatly Gunni, CO. 11 pm after a heavy rain. Tired from 8 hours of driving from Phoenix. Deer standing in the shadows waiting to leap out at a moments notice. The road signs lie. When they say 25 mph curve, they acutally mean 15 mph. I came out of that drive with a migraine and finger impression permantantly imbedded in my steering wheel.


We opted for Red Mountain pass on the way home.

Here's a couple:

The first in driving west down from the summit
The second is the summit

and then there's these:

going thru one of Wolf's tunnels in the rain
rockslide onto highway (not uncommon!)

different pass, same danger...

I know the road, BigV. I've spent my share of time kicking around in the Pacific Northwest. One of my favorite memories is driving down coastal road 1 in Oregon a bit south of Coos Bay, if I remember correctly, and coming round a bend to quite literally encounter the ocean, 500 feet or so below. Apparently some unsually heavy rains had undercut the road, and away it went into the ocean and the highway department hadn't yet put up the barricades (must have just happened!) I managed to stop in time, pulled the car to the side of the road and climbed down to explore tide pools until the shaking stopped!

Memories! I drove over Wolf Creek Pass twice in one day, back in the winter of 1971 :o (sigh) I was living in Albuquerque then, and a ski instructor who I had a crush on had gone up there for the weekend. It seemed like a good idea at the time to "surprise" him by driving up myself, so I tossed some gear in my Gold Duster and took off for Colorado. Once I finally got to the pass I discovered that I should have been in a jeep before even thinking about getting over something that extreme. But I was crazy enough in those days to drive it anyway, and somehow I made it over. Thank God the plows had been through recently, because the reason my cute little ski instructor wanted to go up there was the 100-foot plus base on the runs, the deepest snow they had ever measured up to that time. Unfortunately, after getting a ways down the other side of the pass, I realized I had no idea where to go next. There was supposed to be a ski resort but I couldn't find it. No businesses where I could stop and ask, no signs, and it would start getting dark in an hour or two. So I eventually turned around and went back over the pass and home to Albuquerque, terrified of any part of the road which was in shadow because I knew it would freeze the minute there was no sun on it. Geez, what a day!

That was definitely before the "improvements" Marichiko is talking about, although I have not seen the road since. I have one picture which I took from the top, I remember it seemed like the mountain went straight down for 5,000 feet. Never saw anything even close to that frightening until I drove in the Canadian Rockies.

My mother lived in Dulce, NM for a while, so I got a chance to enjoy some of SW Colorado--beautiful! Never took Wolf Creek Pass, though.

We decided to drive from Albuquerque to Telluride one year for the Jazz Fest. It was rainy by the time we reached Silverton, CO, so the roads were pretty sketchy around there (we were not in a 4WD). In Silverton, we were told NOT to go through Ophir because we did not have the right kind of vehicle, but to go up to Ouray and make a loop around from there. We thought, OK, it will take a little longer, but at least we will have an easier drive/live to tell the tale. Mmm hmm.

It was not too bad all the way to Ouray (is that the Red Mountain Pass?). In fact, if I remember correctly, it was scarier getting to Silverton, with the sheer drop and the barrier-less roads. :mg: But continuing on the road to Telluride...not only was it longer than hell and twisty and turny, but the thickest fog I'd ever seen appeared. We couldn't see ANYTHING, but we KNEW there were cars coming from the other direction, because they had been passing us fairly regularly all the way. We made it somehow, but a couple of other cars had a minor collision before we got there.

As far as I remember, the trip back was uneventful...unless I just blocked it out somehow. No way would I do that drive in the snow!!

Bluecuracao, they told you right. There was NO way you could have made it via the other road. You'd have had to go the wrong way over Imogene pass which is 4wd one way road from Telluride to Ouray. I've performed that feat in a Toyota 4wd with Colorado plates. The trick (besides navigating the road) is to hop out of your vehicle the moment you encounter a Texan or other out of stater going the RIGHT way! You then shake your fist and yell "Stupid flatlander!" and intimidate them into being the one who backs their vehicle down to a pull-out. Works like a charm when you're in the mood to have fun with the tourists! I know Dulce well! Great little town!

Tonchi, I admire your guts to do Wolf Creek in the winter back in '71 in a Duster! The ski area back then was reserved for the cognosci. There was a single small sign right at the turn off and if you were driving on the side of the road opposite, very easy to just keep on going by. The Wolf Creek/Albuquerque route provides endless hours of winter driving fun, especially when your actual destination is Colorado Springs or Denver. I was forced to do it a few times when avalanches had closed the Pass. Ah, memories...

The good news for me is that I'm headed out over Wolf Creek in the next few days to find a place to live back in the 4-corners region. I have been so homesick for so long and I'm leaving the damn Front Range at last!

Yeah, that was what my ski instructor told me that Monday: "I don't know how you could have missed it, there's a sign right there on the road...." Uh-hum.

The next time I did anything so dumb as to drive Wolf Creek in a Duster was the weekend I moved to Tucson in Spring of 1981. I drove my new RX-7 up the back side of Mount Lemmon in the Catalina Mountains because somebody told me there was a ski resort up there. Forgot to tell me there was a perfectly good paved road on the other side though :eyebrow: The "road" could be best described as assorted gullies punctuated by large boulders. When I told somebody at the store at the top how I got there, he said that was impossible, nobody could do it without 4WD. Oh well. I was taught how to drive in mountains by a geologist while I was at CU, practiced on some of the roads above Gunnison while we were on surveys. I am a lot calmer and gentler nowdays, hee hee.

Pleasure to make your aquaintance! One of my first mountain driving instructers was a professor of biology at CU. Ten of us spent one entire summer roaming the mountains of Colorado getting herbarium specimens, doing transects and vegetation surveys. What a blast!

Faaaar out! as we used to say in those days :rainbo: You and I probably have something else in common: we might be the only ones here who actually know where the original South Park is and have been through there many times!

Just checked and found out we're both Libras. That's totally far out too :D

Too cool! We'll let South Park be our little secret. How the hell did you end up in Fresno?

The momster lives here. I had to get as far away from an abusive husband as possible so I left Phoenix and refugeed here 12 years ago along with my 3 dogs, 1 cat, and 3 birds. Because of my lung condition, I had to stay close to sea level and could not go back to Colorado or New Mexico. In July I finally had the operation which is supposed to solve all the problems, within a year I should be Rocky Mountain High again. I have missed skiing more than anything else ;)

When I was a kid, my family drove up the back side of Mt. Lemmon in a VW bus. It was an adventure, and took all day to do what would have taken an hour on the paved road, but we made it in one piece too. The locals didn't believe us when we told them what we did. I remember having to stop and get out to push big rocks/small boulders out of the "road" so we could pass. My dad did some slow careful driving that day. A VW bus is surprisingly good off-road because it is so high off the road, and has no driveshaft in the way.