By this stage in my trip I had come to the conclusion that most US cities are crap. Their various problems usually outweigh the positive points. You would think that with my newfound knowledge I would start avoiding cities but I’m not a common sense kind of guy. I had always wanted to go to Denver, probably because of the romantic image Kerouac portrays of the place. It sounded like a good setting for a city and was close to the wilderness if I felt the need to escape.
Denver is straight out of ‘City Building for Dummies’. There is a big boulevard leading down to the capitol building and the rest of the place is set out on a rambling grid pattern. It’s a very nice main street, reminiscent of Barcelona’s Ramblas, but suffers from the blandness of big chain stores and the tinge of boring that mainstream America brings to everything it does. There are aspects to the place that speak of a more colourful past. There are a huge number of bars and an equally high number of drunks to match but the main street is peppered with people begging. As befitting the image of the place I have never seen a population with more missing teeth.
My first impression of the city as a rambling drunken orgy would have stayed with me if not for a notice posted on all the doors of the hostel. It proclaimed that someone had been caught smoking crack in the rooms and that they, along with everyone in the room, had been thrown out. I found out that Denver has a big crack problem with whole neighbourhoods being taken over by crack heads and dealers. It seems like another problem that has been accepted as unavoidable, one article I read stating that crack was considered to be Reagan era. That would explain a lot about his behaviour.
The morning after my arrival was Labor Day and at 9:30 am the bars were half full with drinkers sucking down the beer. It makes for a good atmosphere and Denver is quite a friendly place but as I wandered around the movie title ‘Things to do in Denver when you’re dead’ kept popping into my mind. There was a big fair on which occupied my time for a good 30 minutes but the rest of the time was spent in shops and eating. I spent about four days there but can’t precisely recall doing or seeing much of interest. That’s just the kind of town it is. 2 million people getting pissed out of their minds a lot.
I came to Colorado, the state that houses Denver, more for the scenery than the city. The train west from Denver goes through the Rockies, some amazing canyons and enters the desert near the border with Utah. I came back out here to a small town called Grand Junction to have a closer look at the Colorado National Monument. This is a set of mountains, canyons and monoliths stained with red dirt. They were formed by the erosion of dirt from around the harder rock and their presence lifts an otherwise dull landscape into the extraordinary.
The town of Grand Junction is a sprawling mess. Once a major transportation hub it has remade itself with the help of the gas and oil industries. The result is a permanent tar smell hanging heavy in the air. I’m sure the headache will clear up soon. I walked out of town the next morning and after just a few miles the atmosphere clears and the great ridges stand out. Soon I was walking through desert country as the thin crust of topsoil gave way to sand underneath and huge granite boulders combined with red sandstone to give the place an alien feel. Once you leave all trace of the town behind it begins to feel like going back in time. As I climbed to the top of one ridge a huge canyon stretched out before me with waves of red stone heading into the distance.
I was determined to get down into the canyon to have a closer look but the path that led me into it soon disappeared and I was left to battle my way through the bushes as I climbed up the other side. I had a rest in a natural cavern that had been smoothed out over the ages and felt like an Indian scout waiting for the approaching cavalry. As I continued along the other side of the canyon I started to become worried about where I was going. Any trace of path had gone and I had been walking too far to want to turn back. For all I knew there was another canyon cutting my path back home, so I decided that I needed to get into the canyon I was currently walking above and get home through the bottom of it. This was harder than it sounds. The canyon walls were quite steep and I was about 200 feet from the canyon base. I scouted one route down which suddenly became more perilous than I cared for when the narrow ridge down became covered in two foot deep sand, making the drop on the other side loom into view. As I was heading back I saw another way down a little further on. It looked hard but possible so with unthinking cockiness I ventured forth.
The way down was over a sandstone cliff which looked to have holds the whole way down. I scrambled down part of it on my feet before sliding down a steep part to a foothold. As I surveyed my new position I became a little bit uneasy. It was starting to look harder than it had from above. Instead of sliding down most of it on my feet I saw now that I would have to do some rock climbing. There was no going back now so I shifted position and managed to find some holds that took me part of the way down. I wasn’t too high, about 10 metres to where the steepness levelled out a bit, but you go and measure a 10 metre drop; it’s not the kind of distance you want to fall. As I began climbing down I started to wonder how I got into this position. I was fully stretched out, hands and feet on holds and looking for more further down but I had run out. I spotted a good hand hold just below me and as I shifted my right hand on to it it gave way and I pulled a huge chunk of the cliff out. Luckily there was a hold created and I grabbed on to it but now I was starting to poo my pants. I was stuck on a cliff that seemed likely to crumble in my hands, it was still a fair way to fall and my legs were starting to get wobbly after the four hour walk that had preceded my climbing adventure. I considered just letting myself drop, but I like to avoid pain whenever possible, so I was leaving that as a last resort. In any case, it’s very difficult to let go of a cliff. The natural response is to hang on at all costs. The last argument against this course of action was that no-one knew where I was and I didn’t fancy crawling for five miles with a broken ankle.
I call the manoeuvre that got me out of the jam the Bacon leap of faith. I was trying to circle round to my left where the cliff got a little bit less steep, but I had been blocked by a big jutting piece of the cliff that was completely smooth. A little further beyond this rock was a short sloping ledge with a stunted pine tree growing from it. I’m not sure how I did it now but I jumped around the rock to my left, landed on the ledge at a run and managed to grab onto the tree to stop myself falling head first. I was momentarily safe and took the time to have a brief rest and calm down a bit. I managed to slide down the remaining five metres of the cliff and ended up with a graze on each hand and a cut on my leg. I could live with that. There’s nothing like managing to avoid a lot of pain to make your day better. On the way back to the hostel a magnificent rainbow stretched across the sky and comforted my mind as my aching body walked the five miles home.
Dave out.
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