Always beautiful scenery and music !! 

The Hanging Flume of Dolores Canyon 

The Hanging Flume was an open water chute (known as a flume) built over the Dolores River Canyon in Colorado. The Montrose Placer Mining Company built the flume in the 1880s to facilitate gold mining.

Some sections of the flume remain attached to the canyon wall, although much of the wood has vanished. Inaccessible sections of the flume remain, and offer visitors one of those "head scratching moments" in contemplation of the industry of man and lengths to which he will go for a "dollar." 

Many technical climbers would find getting to the flume from cliff base above the river, "very difficult if not impossible." Most of it is several hundred feet above the river. In some places a rappel is possible from up top- where the flume is within 50 meters (166 feet) of the top. And yet the crews who put it up there not only had to climb it, but work there, drilling holes in the sandstone for anchors, and a frame strong enough to carry a four foot deep, six foot wide trough of water to where that was needed. 

The Montrose Placer Mining Company was formed to mine gold from placer deposits along the Dolores River. Hydraulic mining, a popular method of exploiting placer deposits, required water to be efficiently transported, often using wooden flumes to maintain the necessary volume and pressure. The flume connected with a six mile long ditch, both designed to provide water for miners in the San Juan Mountains of Colorado. Construction of the Hanging Flume took three years, beginning in 1887.

Approximately 24 workers participated in the build, suspended from ropes onto the cliff face. A derrick may also have been used. The construction used 1.8 million board feet of lumber and ended up with a total cost over $100,000. The timber used was mostly Ponderosa pine, a local tree, and it was supported using iron rods. The completed flume was approximately 12 miles (19 km) long and up to 75 feet (23 m) above the river. It began on a dam on the San Miguel River above Uravan, Colorado. The flume's opening (the headgate) no longer exists, and the connecting ditch has been filled. The actual wooden flume was 6 feet wide and 4 feet deep. When in use, it conveyed 80,000,000 gallons of water each day. The flume was only used for three years before being abandoned. The reason was that the mine itself was closed after the discovery that most of the gold was unrecoverable, and the investors in the project only made $80,000 after investing over $1,000,000 into the mine and associated engineering works. After the closure of the mine, local residents reused the timber.

The music is a frolic (More "same sounding 1930s horror film music." ROFLMFAO!) Videography is by drone, rappel to the flume for a close up look, and from the water flume at Elitch's in Denver- riding a flume in an amusement park. It is fun music. Western and adventurous, always leading to a new and unexpected scene around the next bend. IMO it is exactly proper and fitting. "Jazz" or "Nashville" Country or any other style would be completely out of place, out of character. It would be noise to fill in. "It" doesn't get that music must fit its subject. You can't just write or make "pretty." You have to capture the spirit of the place, or thing. 

You'll notice the music suddenly stops without resolution too. Very deliberate. "And then what?" Well, go see for yourself! 



 

The Flattops Wilderness 

Flat Tops Wilderness Area is the third largest U.S. Wilderness Area in Colorado. 

Trappers Lake, located in the north of the area, was the lake that inspired Arthur Carhart, a United States Forest Service official, to plead for wilderness preservation. The Chief of the U.S. Forest Service designated 118,230 acres (47,850 ha) of the Routt and White River national forests as the Flat Tops Primitive Area on March 4, 1932, to be managed to protect the area’s wild values.

Congress passed the Wilderness Act in 1964, which, among other things, required the Secretary of Agriculture to review the suitability of all primitive areas for inclusion into the national wilderness system within ten years. Following this mandate, the U.S. Forest Service evaluated the Flat Tops primitive area and surrounding forest and in 1967 recommended 142,230 acres for wilderness designation.

Conflict arose over the inclusion in the wilderness proposal of lands adjacent to the South Fork of the White River, near the southwest boundary of the proposed wilderness. Several private and public entities proposed dams and water diversions on the South Fork to facilitate development of rich oil shale deposits to the west.

Timber interests also initially opposed designating wilderness outside the primitive area’s boundary. Conservation groups, led by the Colorado Open Space Coordination Council and including Sierra Club, The Wilderness Society, Defenders of Wildlife, and the National Audubon Society, supported protecting a much larger, 230,000-acre area that included lower elevation forest and lakes outside the primitive area.

On June 5, 1975, the Senate passed a bill sponsored by U.S. Senator Floyd Haskell (D-Colo.) to designate 235,230 acres as the Flat Tops Wilderness Area. The bill passed the U.S. House of Representatives by a vote of 369-1 on December 1, 1975, and was signed into law by President Gerald R. Ford on December 12, 1975. The lands protected as wilderness included the contested lands along the South Fork of the White River, effectively prohibiting the contested dam construction there.

Spring Cave is a large, not completely explored cave in Colorado in the White River National Forest, in the South Fork Valley of the White River, that has been largely cut out by an underground river running through it. It contains a lake several hundred meters inside as well as several caverns only accessible through underwater diving. The cave is free to explore.

There are two entrances to the cave, both at the end of Spring Cave Trail. Most visitors prefer the nearest entrance, an over-two-meter-high passageway. From there one descends through several rooms leading to a permanent ladder, followed by more rooms leading to the river. It is the largest river inside a cave in Colorado. The level of the river rises and falls throughout the year, and can even rise to the level of the cave entrance on rare occasions.

There are several series of rooms above and past the river, a few of which lead to an underground lake. Past the lake lie several sumps which must be passed through diving. The full extent of the cavern and underground waterways in it is still not completely known.

Nearby Rifle Canyon is a world class location for free climbing, with some of the most difficult routes put up anywhere, largely because of the limestone and its terrific handhold and foothold characteristics. We watch two climbers put up world class routes. 

The infamous Devil's Causeway is a strip of land is located in the Flat Tops Wilderness, an area of flattened basaltic domes that rise up from the landscape as vast tabletops — anomalies in a part of Colorado more commonly known for its jagged, pyramidal peaks. The Devil’s Causeway itself is a narrow ridge of running between the drainage of the William Fork River and the White River. It is accessed only by hikers, usually via a trail that begins at Stillwater Reservoir, east of the small town of Yampa and south of Steamboat Springs. It is a six-mile round-trip venture to the causeway or 10 miles round-trip if you continue on a loop that returns back to the reservoir. Along the rigorous route are several spectacular sights, including the peaceful Little Causeway Lake and meadows sprinkled with bright splashes of wildflowers in the summer.

But nothing compares to the thrill of crossing Devil’s Causeway. At 11,800 feet and just four feet wide in places — with sheer drops of many hundreds feet on either side — this venture is not for those prone to vertigo. It is said that nearly everyone who attempts the crossing is quite literally brought to his or her knees, scrambling across the rocky path in a low squat. But for those who conquer Devil’s Causeway, victory is sweet — and rewarded with unparalleled views of the surrounding high mesas and the valleys below.

The music for all this is ABA symphonic form, and opens magical and wondrous, then transitions into a big, bold, heroic, stoic melody, vast and grand like its subject. If you enter the wilderness on horseback, it's like stepping back into the 1870s and 1880s- the "real" west. Just like it was. Romantic. Heroic, So big and spacious you almost can't believe it, and that is just how the music had to be. 

The B section is exploration of Spring Cave. That part is very complex, 20th and 21st Century styles reflecting an uneasiness from being inside somewhere human senses and rationality are constantly challenged by what you can't see, and can see- things for which NOTHING on the surface prepared you. It is at once, disturbing, beautiful, a Stygian gloom, breathtaking, terrifying, and wondrous. 

The A section returns for the Devil's Causeway episodes. 


 

WOW... So much to watch now...  You've been WICKED busy !!

Yes, I remember that one.   Funny place...

Why are your snow plows on the BACK of the trucks ??

Ha Ha Ha…

Lovely !!  Too bad you couldn't shove 'em into the water, but the kids might have drowned, so bad idea, even though it'd serve 'em right to get soaked to the bone.

Sad that adults taught their children to defy clear rules and to be rude to those reminding them of the rules. 

If they ever see the video, they'll probably LOVE being in it. 
 

Siagiah wrote:

Lovely !!  Too bad you couldn't shove 'em into the water, but the kids might have drowned, so bad idea, even though it'd serve 'em right to get soaked to the bone.

Sad that adults taught their children to defy clear rules and to be rude to those reminding them of the rules. 

If they ever see the video, they'll probably LOVE being in it. 
 

Yeah. That's why they should have been boiled. Nobody should go in that water. The ecology is that beautiful and that fragile. I am afraid due to popularity, the lake is doomed. Too many ignorant people, and it only takes a few. Colorado became like California, and people are swarming all over the wilderness, everywhere. Too many are careless. 

I saw drone footage of avalanche damage in the Conundrum Hot Springs valley. Unbelievable. Many avalanches merged in the valley bottom to produce a mile wide monster that went on down for many miles, taking out forest, cabins... everything. Access by road or trail is impossible due to all the downed timber. Only by drone can we see extent of this damage. Many trail heads are closed due to the same, and won't be open for a long time. Furthermore we have another major snow event setting up right now, expected to drop feet of new snow in the mountains. 
 

Pikes Peak 14115 wrote:

Colorado Native Orchids. 

Colorado has about 35 species of native, wild orchids. They are all documented here in this work, that took three years of searching and filming to acquire them all. Some are relatively common, and others so rare, they're known in only a few remote locations. 

The music had to be elfin, fairytale music; delicate, richly colorful, a little mysterious, a little unexpected. If you've seen orchid flowers in sunlight, they sparkle. You hear the sparkle in the music, played by glock and celesta. 



 

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Those are STUNNING !!!