A very different kind of hike

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.