Last
Monday I went on an unusual hike with my friend Chip who owns the
restaurant next to the Country Store. I'd heard the story of a
B-24 bomber that crashed on Mt Logan in September 1943, apparently on
a training mission from Lowry Field in Denver. Since there was
no such thing as a flight data recorder back then, one can only guess
as to what happened. Witnesses said two of the planes four
engines were on fire as it came down. The pilot managed to
arrest the downward spiral for a moment, then plunged straight into
the mountainside. The top gunner managed to bailout and drifted
into a wooded area 10 miles away. The remaining 11 men
went down with the plane. Chip and I climbed up near the
tree line, but couldn't find the wreck. I had enough cell signal to
call a friend, who called another friend and got the lattitude and longitude of
the wreck. I then downloaded an app where I could input the
coordinates, and in about 2 minutes I had a graphic image on my phone
of our location related to the wreck site. We were probably 300 yards from the spot, and we managed to climb down to the wreck in about 30 minutes. Chip (who's a flip-phone hold-out) was so amazed that I could find the wreck just using my iphone that he became a "convert" and decided to buy one himself. All told, It took us
over 4 hours to reach the plane and it was a pretty intense climb at
times. Duke was with us and he kind of freaked out when we had to
cross three boulder fields. Although he has four legs to my
two, he can't grab with his hands. Chip and I had to lift him
across several large gaps between the bigger boulders. When we
reached the wreck, both Chip and I were stunned by both the amount
and spread of the wreckage. Apparently, once the bodies had
been recovered the army blew the plane up to prevent someone from
stealing any technology (seems like a joke now, but I suppose the
planes were technically advanced for their time). We combed the
wreckage for over an hour. I can't speak for Chip, but
walking around all those twisted pieces of metal was a surreal
experience for me, knowing that 11 men died on that spot almost
exactly 70 years ago. We left when the thunder started
rumbling in the distance, but it was a FASCINATING day spent with a
good friend. Life is great.
