One of many
trip reports under the
SilGro home page for Alan Silverstein and Cathie
Grow.
Email me at
ajs@frii.com.
Last update: July 26, 2024
(Previous trip report: 1987_0905-07_SnowmassMtn.htm)
I finally stumbled across an opportunity to trust my life to a rope, inside the marble quarry in Colorado [during a time while it was abandoned and not in operation]. To my amazement, I seized it (the opportunity, not so much the rope) and enjoyed it! What an incredible setting for my first rappel.
After returning to Marble the Manahans headed west while Jim Baer, Barbara Roach, and her nephew Bart rearranged items between their Subaru and my Jeep. We departed town again a little past noon and took the marked turn to the quarry just before the general store. The road went past the old marble mill site and across a narrow bridge over the Crystal River. Then it climbed for 3.4 moderate 4WD miles along the right side of a different drainage than the one to Crystal.
The marble quarry was apparently only one of two major ones that ever operated in the US. It ceased production around 1945 (after supplying stone to the Lincoln Memorial and the Tomb of the Unknowns) leaving another still going in Vermont.
The quarry was visible for some distance down-valley as a huge white area on the mountainside, partly natural and partly due to tremendous tailing and waste piles, including enormous blocks of white marble. At 1250 we parked at the blocked end of the road and walked the remaining quarter mile or so, about 300' uphill, in a light rain.
There were three "windows" into the quarry, each about 50' wide and 30' high. We climbed to the first one, a little lower than the others. Each opening had an iron fence across to prevent the unwary from stumbling over the precipice into the hole in the mountain. We hopped over the fence and into a small man-made cave.
Later I noticed there was a bar missing in this fence, so it was easy to get through, and it was well worth doing so [if the quarry were to be abandoned again]. This first entrance was the most dramatic because it dropped to the left rather than straight ahead. From its flat floor we could look across all three amphitheaters, about 30' up, 50' or more down, and way, way across.
The quarry was like a castle turned inside out; hard to describe... Sheer marble walls with regular pattern cuts, side tunnels, various debris, and a floor of thick green ice above about 10' of standing water. In some places there was no ice and the water reflected the eerie blue-greenish architecture.
We made preparations, then Jim and Bart led down the single rope. Under Barb's patient care I was rigged into a harness and attached to the doubled rope, then followed. The rope laid about 10' gently down dirt and then over a sharp lip followed by a straight drop.
Normally I was a bit wary near any edge, especially when standing on flat ground (as opposed to for example hanging onto a jagged ridge). I found to my surprise that the rope felt quite solid and reliable as I backed over the edge slowly. It was easy to manage and there was no way I was going to fall or lose control.
Getting over the lip was the hardest part but it wasn't so tough as it looked. I just took it slow and released the rope a few inches at a burst through a metal "figure 8" attached to the harness in front of me, controlling tension with my right hand near my side. I have no idea what color my knuckles were because I wore leather gloves (grin). After that start, it was a slow descent, a bit of rope at a time, to a log floating across two icebergs, then backwards to a solid boulder to detach.
Barb soon followed and we four spent an hour exploring the reachable parts of the quarry floor. Previous visitors had set up ramshackle bridges across stretches of water or rocks using copious discarded lengths of well-preserved timber. We roamed around the first two chambers and looked down into the third one.
The echoes were incredible. It was hard to communicate, especially with occasional curious visitors looking down from the middle window about 100' above us. Some people appeared at the first shelf, above the rappel rope, but fortunately didn't mess with our stuff.
After most of an hour we started to reclimb the rope. It was slow going, so while someone else ascended, I explored the only tunnel I found out at floor level, which was right nearby. It was a narrow hole about 6' high, 4' wide, 100' long, and flooded about a foot deep. But there was a lot of floating lumber in it.
Using various pieces, and with some help from Jim, I constructed a daisy-chain bridge through the tunnel in about a half hour. Hot work even though it was freezing cold in there!
Thus three of us exited through the tunnel and the narrow (3' wide, 2' high) opening at the far end, while Bart managed to jumar back up the rope and over the lip. I guess we all could have climbed it, but I'm glad I didn't have to.
[Back then I wrote:] If you want to get into the quarry without a rope, look for the small opening just below and left of the rightmost (downstream) quarry entrance, bring a flashlight and warm clothing, and test your footing carefully, especially on the floating ice sheet once you exit the tunnel.
The tailings outside were a rock collector's heaven... Lots of colorful bits of marble and rejected quartz. We mosied out and drove back down the road to Marble in about a half hour, arriving at 1655. Next I happened to head alone to climb Mount Elbert and "South Elbert"...
(Next trip report: 1987_0907-08_SouthAndMtElbert.htm)