The Showdown at Rollins Pass

With a graduate degree clasped in one hand and an ex-boyfriend unbound from the other, I packed up Tessie (my Datsun B210) with earthly belongings, other-worldly aspirations, and two companions. Kathie and Anna were along for the ride. It was the summer of 1978 and I was moving to Colorado at the urging of my friend Patty.

A college sidekick who had talked me out of many a class, Patty was hard to resist. All she had to do was bat her eyes and shrug. “Come on,” the gesture commanded. Mischief was promised; no refusal allowed. She had persuaded me to live with her family in a remote reach of the Rockies.

They had settled in Pinecliffe, a whistle-stop along South Boulder Creek. At 8,500 feet above sea level, its location attracted 18th-century gold miners, 19th-century rail workers, and 20th-century hippies. It was from here that David Moffat built a 27-mile switchback rail-line across the Continental Divide at Rollins Pass. It was replaced in 1928 by the 6.2-mile Moffat Tunnel, the sixth largest tunnel on earth.

Sparks sometimes ignite wildfires in this dry gulch of a settlement. That and the presence of bears, rattlesnakes, and mountain lions make living dangerous. Patty, however, was a mountain mama whose graciousness reassured my companions and me. Oxygen-deprived and road-weary, we surrendered to the hectic hospitality of kids and dogs in quarters that were mere steps above camping. Chele was eight, Jenna six, and Drew three.

After a few days of acclimating to the thin air and mountain-family lifestyle, we piled into my low-slung B210 and endeavored to cross the Continental Divide. Patty nestled Drew on her lap next to me while Kathie and Anna flanked Chele and Jenna in the back.

We took the scenic Peak-to-Peak Highway to Rollinsville. Established by gold miner John Rollins, it was little more than a frontier stage stop. In the center of town, Patty directed me to turn right on East Portal, a 20-mile primitive wagon-road that Rollins had built over the 11,666-foot pass that also bears his name. It parallels Moffat’s rail line.

Somewhere around mile six, or eight, or ten—who knows, the rutted gravel road became more gravel than road, and then more rut than gravel. But we paid no heed, instead responding to whistling winds and trains with delighted oohs and ahhs. Switchbacking past mountain lakes, we witnessed lodgepole pines and quaking aspen transition to perennial wildflowers and alpine tundra.

By the time we realized that the only other vehicles in sight were ATVs, we could not turn around, and a reverse descent was certain death. Tessie’s belly skimmed rough terrain that dropped precariously down one side and then the other. Glacial peaks of the Divide emerged as we slipped through Needle’s Eye Tunnel, a stunning cliffside shaft.

Inching upward, we held our breaths at each twist and turn. Oohs and aahs became breathless whimpers. In the rearview mirror I glimpsed Kathie and Anna. With eyes dilated, mouth grimaced, and eyebrows horizontal, they were prototypes for the Faces Pain Scale.

The panoramas may have left us agog, but our arrival at the deteriorated Devil’s Slide Trestles paralyzed us. Its name says it all. An engineering feat, the bridge hugged a sheer cliff on one side while jaw-dropping beauty fell away on the other. Several hundred feet of weatherworn rail ties were all that stood between us and the abyss. 

Tessie stalled. I stalled. I gasped. We gasped. With four adults, three children, and a few hundred pounds of stuff in the trunk, there was no way we could cross this bridge and live to tell the tale. No one spoke as we stared down the dilemma. Pulses pounded. The wind whooshed, pulverizing our nerves.

“Everybody out,” I finally commanded in a voice barely above a whisper. They would walk and I would maneuver the weight-reduced car over the planks.

“Everybody stays,” Patty countered, drawing her baby close. “My children stay with me. And I’m not getting out.”

“You have to,” I argued. If Patty didn’t get out, nobody could. This was a two-door coupe. “We can’t…”

“We can. If we stay together.”

Far from a choice, this was a showdown. On Rollins Pass.

No one budged. We faced not a battle of guns, wits, or even logic. Lord knows, logic was on my side. No, this was the existential battle of hope verses faith. Patty didn’t hope we would pass unscathed. She believed we would. If we stayed together.

So I coaxed Tessie alive. I held my breath. We held a collective breath. Perhaps it, alone, lofted us over this impossibly narrow, shaky bridge. Perhaps that collective gasp was simply an angel who couldn’t say “no” to Patty.

As soon as we rattled over the last tie, the road smoothed itself out, grinning, it seemed, as it widened curvaceously in gentle descent. There were trees and grasses and a sense of safety on the western slope. The jagged Divide, with peaks that trap storms and steal their moisture, spired behind us, an ominous fence that forewarned return.

We sped along to Idaho Springs to play in the snow of St. Mary’s Glacier and then to eat ice cream in Central City, as if nothing extraordinary had just transpired. Sometimes, it seems, a choice isn’t a decision, a verdict, or an ultimatum. Sometimes, fate blinks.