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"Day 4. Free Day, Skinner Hut"
-- from The World Outdoors' hike description

"Today is all yours as we layover for a day to soak in the peace of the high mountains. The options are limitless. Relax at the hut, or lace up the hiking boots and head down the old railway grade of the Midland Railroad of the 1890s as we descend toward Turquoise Lake. En Route, we hike to the long since abandoned Hagerman Tunnel and explore the ghost town of Douglas City, once a wild settlement with eight saloons and dance halls."
-- from The World Outdoors' hike description

There were three options for today, but pretty much everyone decided we wanted to see a real western ghost town.

And here it is:

Er -- not quite fitting the stereotype, that's for sure. No dry, dusty roads, no creaky wooden buildings, no tumbleweeds. Not really even much of a ghostly feeling, just a lot of cleared open space and the inevitable rocks and boulders. This was as close ase we got to a creaky old wooden building (there were a few others, all had trees growing inside the foundations):

Not disappointing -- just different. Still, it was less Deadwood than Little House on the Prairie, and it's hard to imagine it being a den of sin and depravity and rough and tough pioneer type folks. Yet, that's exactly what it was. At least, according to the sign we found:

This was a short, easy walk; it was a day off we had, but they gave us options of short hikes if we were interested, and as I recall everyone chose to come out to Douglass City. Two of us -- Nancy and Alison, I think -- hiked down the road and met the rest of us (in a van) at the bottom to begin the hike; they were really hardcore. According to our paperwork there was another option of a hike to Hagerman Pass and the Continental Divide; I don't think anyone did that. We drove by the sign the day before and that turned out to be the only visit up there. But this was more than enough for the day -- listed as 6 miles and 1500' elevation gain/loss. I think the 6 included the hike down to trail head, so we really only went about 4 miles for the whole day. But it wasn't just about coming to Douglass City -- we came to see what the inhabitants of the company town called Douglass City were building ... and that came after a short hike out of the "ghost town."

As we headed out of Douglass City I was once again in the back nine of the group; I caught Mark at the top of a slight rise and coming from a different fork in the road than the others had headed (they were going to the tunnel). I didn't think much about it, just thought he'd either gone for a whiz or was scoping out another trail for us to take.

This is called foreshadowing.

As you can probably bet, we didn't pay a lot of attention to the "danger don't enter" warning.

Here's the tunnel from a ways back; hardly looks like more than a cave.

But then you get closer:

I also walked in the cave, which is floored with a complete sheet of thick glacial ice (with lots of bats in the back), but those photos just didn't quite make it out.

A fissure in the dirty, dirty ice:

After the tunnel, we headed back down the fork I'd seen Mark emerging from earlier; this apparently was the area where the tracks were once laid, and it was a narrow cut between high rock walls. The feeling was like walking through a long hall, and immediately the guides started noting how this was the kind of place a cougar might hide out, ready to pounce. Suddenly, Mark turned and pointed to a mound of dark stuff on a rock at waist-high level, pointing at it with his knife. "Scat," he said. "Clearly big cat scat." Which on top of the print from the day before was unnerving. He said you could tell because -- and here he cut it in half with the knife, making me hope he wasn't using the knife to prepare dinner later -- there were animal bones and things like that in the scat.

"But the only way you can be sure," he said -- and then popped a chunk of it in his mouth, chewing with glee.

We had a good second of collective disgust, punctuated with a lot of noises before we started laughing. It was a Clif Bar.

"Oldest prank on the trail," he said.

And we went on.

Back at the Skinner hut, everyone pretty well collapsed on the sofas in front of the wood stove, or just outside. It was clouding up, being mid-afternoon, and the weather was turning. I was the only one who wanted to make the trip into Leadville with Eric, who had to pick up some supplies, so I took a shopping list from the hikers, who wanted booze, tampons (surprise!), and various other things. Part of my reason for doing this trip (well, perhaps a large part) is that I'm writing a story about the area, and part of the story takes place in Leadville, so I wanted to see the place for myself. According to the info there, Leadville is the highest ... um, something in America. Town? It's at 10,252 feet and to get to it, we had to take the van over those horrid bumpy roads and go very, very slowly until we hit tarmac. At least I got to pick the music, and Eric had decent taste, too, so the ride was pleasant enough -- we went through Steely Dan and George Clinton. Eric noted how it's the Colorado weather that tears up the roads; locals say there are only four seasons -- winter, almost winter, almost over winter, and something else I can't recall, but you get the gist.

Leadville itself is actually fairly cool. I hadn't known what to expect, though I thought it would be far more empty and desolate. Instead, there were some reasonably cute shops, a great bookstore (this was Harry Potter release weekend and so naturally Gryffindor had taken that store over). I wanted to find a cheap magnet for my mom and for one of the hikers, so I hit a few stores after Eric and I went to the grocery, and then we both got ice cream.

I dig that Leadville, CO has a "Manhattan Bar." This, of course, is Main Street.

Back up in the mountains (heh) the weather continued to get progressively odder. We sat down to a lovely lavish dinner of grilled salmon and chicken, portobella and couscous with vegetables, then a chocolate fondue for dessert. Midway through the feast, someone looked outside the windows during dinner and noticed that the world had turned into a Prince song:

The sky was all purple.

Sigh.